Prepaid Expo Europe 2010: a truly international and interactive event

The dust has settled on Prepaid Expo Europe, and we want to thank all of the Sponsors, Speakers and attendees from over 19 countries that helped make our first Europe-based event a great success.

Our much lauded conference Chairs Matthew Lanford of MasterCard and Brian Dunne of Action Solutions guided our 3 days of sessions with passion and enthusiasm, which created interactive sessions addressing the pressing issues facing myriad European prepaid issues

Keynote Speaker Hamish Taylor kicked off the event by sharing his experiences at the helm of Eurostar, Sainsbury Bank, British Airways, to name a couple His imaginative, innovative ways of solving business problems by plucking ideas from outside the industry to solve business problems by identifying customer benefits. These themes of innovation and listening to the customer carried throughout the event, with our speakers referencing how these very ideas should be applied to the prepaid industry.

Anthony Olsen of Paypal Europe, Thaer Sabri of Electronic Money Association and Siobhan Moore of Salans took us through the regulatory minefield of doing prepaid business throughout Europe, answering dozens of questions from the crowd. Iwan Mathys talked about the details of his wildly growing prepaid business at Swiss Post with his distribution guru Christian Lindner from Retailo. Tony Craddock of Global Prepaid Exchange hosted a conversation about contrarian views on loyalty and incentives with Mark de Quervain of Vue Entertainment, Niki Akhurst of Smartbox and Kevin Turnbull from Spafinder. Steve Shutts talked through how he and the Norton Group solved Animal's prepaid programme requirements.

In addition to the impromptu networking taking part throughout the Conrad, attendees, speakers and sponsors all gathered for Prepaid Expo's receptions, the highlight of which was MasterCard's Diamond Cocktail Reception. All attendees received a glass of champagne with a stone in the bottom… but only one lucky delegate from Brazil walked away with a real .75 carat diamond valued at 2,700 Euro!

In all, it was a great launch of the Prepaid Expo event into Europe. Have ideas and suggestions about next year's event? Email Event Director Hollie Goldman at hgoldman@iirusa.com

Prepaid Expo Europe would like to welcome Prosodie to the Speaker Line Up… experts in multichannel prepayment platforms

Master Thief just added as Keynote! Hamish Taylor, Former CEO of Sainsbury Bank and Eurostar, to advise prepaid execs how to poach growth from other industries

New Case Study Added: Swiss Post to discuss Third Party Gift Card distribution in Europe with partner Retailo

Find out which Prepaid Expo Europe attendee has a real diamond at the bottom of their champagne glass at the Diamond Cocktail Reception! A great networking event to meet all of our delegates and speakers

Leading Prepaid associations from across the globe will be joining together to instruct how to launch and implement a prepaid programme

Welcome Citi Prepaid Services and FIS to the programme!