CARTES 2014, the global event for payment, identification and mobility, is fast approaching and the world’s experts in the sector are about to head to Paris for its biggest and most important annual gathering.
The 2013 event welcomed more than 20,000 visitors, some 1,670 of whom attended the opening conference - the World Card Summit - while also visiting the 450 exhibitors at the venue.
Expanded conference programme
The CARTES 2014 conference programme and Exhibitor Workshops, which run from 09:30 to 17:00 on the three days of the show, will provide an insight into major trends shaping the future of payments, such as digital security, ID and mobility. A main theme of CARTES 2014 will be ‘Users on the move’, and it will be showcasing this new mobility paradigm, where services move with their users - wherever they may be. In particular, the event will highlight the theme of ‘security for confidence’. As always with technology, there is a darker side to innovation and the threat landscape is constantly evolving – as are the measures required to tame it. Secure identification has become a critically important issue for individuals, companies and governments and CARTES 2014 will detail the techniques now emerging to ensure that mobile payment can retain the confidence of users worldwide.
The volume of mobile payments and commerce is expanding exponentially and that process is likely to accelerate further as major players such as Apple enter the NFC m-payment arena. Among new features at this year’s CARTES will be the presentation, in association with Fabernovel, of the first Digital Showcase on Monday 3 November – before the main CARTES show begins - which will give attendees the opportunity to experience and understand new technologies. At the conference sessions themselves, 12 different tracks over the three days – including the challenges and benefits of EMV, mPOS and iBeacons, connected objects and biometrics applications – will ensure that there are plenty of high-level presentations in different subject areas from world-leading industry speakers for delegates to choose from. Cutting-edge discussion panels are also a key part of the mix, allowing experts from across the sector to air their views. The issue of trust will be a major factor. One conference session, ‘Towards trusted cloud technology’, will examine the latest trends in the marketplace, particularly the potential divergence between the HCE environment and the Bluetooth Smart environment that supports iOS devices from Apple. And as technology is enabling smartphones and other hardware to become secure vehicles for cashless payment as well as their more traditional roles providing access to networks and other IT applications, it will also look at the issues involved in creating, managing and using secure identities across multiple smart devices.
Where now for Bitcoin?
Other highlights of the CARTES conference programme over the three days will include a close look at just where the Bitcoin phenomenon goes from here.
After the well-publicised problems of hacking of exchange platforms, will it – and other crypto-currencies – survive and flourish as alternatives to legacy payment methods, or be consigned to the mere status of an interesting technical footnote in monetary history?
The use of digital, rather than paper, money in charitable donations will also be the subject of discussions. Can electronic payments prevent the long-running problem of international funding being siphoned off into the wrong pockets in the developing world? This underlying theme of security – and how to enhance it – will play a major role in this year’s CARTES event. With hackers and malware becoming increasingly inventive, discussions on thwarting them are likely to be to the fore. Together, the combination of exhibition and conference promises to give everyone attending CARTES 2014 much food for thought.
