8 OCTOBER 2026  

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08:30-09:00

 REGISTRATION AND WELCOME COFFEE

Badge collection, welcome coffee

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09:00-09:10

 WELCOME ADDRESS

Opening of the Forum and how the day will run

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09:10-09:20

CHAIRMEN OPENING ADDRESS

Key themes for 2026: trust, speed, safety, and scale

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​ 09:20-09:45

KEYNOTE SESSION + Q&A

UAE 2026: Building a Trusted Payments Hub at Global Scale​

• What great governance looks like in practice: data controls, accountability, board visibility

• How leading organisations are balancing growth, customer experience, and financial crime defence

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09:45-10:15

 PANEL DISCUSSION + Q&A

The UAE Payments Landscape 2026:

Instant, Cross‑Border & Embedded 

• Real-time payments, account-to-account, and cross-border money movement: what customers expect as “normal”

• Embedded payments and platform models: where value is created (and how to price it)

• Keeping approvals high while reducing fraud and chargebacks

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10:15-10:40

KEYNOTE SESSION + Q&A

Instant, Open & Intelligent: Building the AI‑Powered Payments Stack

• How payment flows are being automated end-to-end: routing, screening, authorisation, and settlement

• Where AI is already cutting cost, reducing fraud, and protecting margin (without adding friction)

 

10:40-11:10

PANEL DISCUSSION + Q&A

Agentic Payments: The Companion to Agentic Commerce​​​

• What ‘agentic’ really means in payments: autonomous initiation, decisioning, and post-payment service

• Guardrails: consent, liability, disputes, audit trails, and model risk

• How banks, PSPs and merchants can prepare for agent-to-agent transactions

 

11:10-11:40

COFFEE BREAK & NETWORKING

• Curated one-to-one introductions with senior buyers and partners

• Time to follow up on specific use cases and partnership needs

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11:40-12:10

PANEL DISCUSSION + Q&A

Fraud & Scams 2026: Real‑Time Defence Without Killing UX​​

• APP scams, social engineering and mule networks: detection and prevention at speed

• Layered signals (behaviour, device, biometrics, network intelligence) for smarter decisions

• Fraud collaboration models across banks, fintechs, merchants and telcos​

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12:10-12:40

PANEL DISCUSSION + Q&A

AML/KYC 2.0 in High‑Velocity Markets:

Risk‑Based, Continuous & Explainable​

• Smarter onboarding and continuous KYC/KYB: keeping bad actors out without slowing growth

• Reducing false positives with better data, analytics, and case management

• Regulator-ready evidence: “Why did you approve this customer/transaction?”

 

12:40-13:00

PANEL DISCUSSION + Q&A

Digital Assets in Payments:

Stablecoins, Tokenised Deposits & Regulated On/Off‑Ramps​​

• Where tokenised value can improve settlement speed, transparency, and treasury efficiency

• Controls that matter: sanctions screening, source-of-funds, travel rule considerations, and custody risk

• Building compliant rails across multiple regulatory environments (local, regional, and global)

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13:00-14:00

NETWORKING LUNCH

• Hosted tables and working lunch conversations

• Opportunity for sponsors and buyers to sit together with purpose

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14:00-14:30

PANEL DISCUSSION + Q&A

Open Banking → Open Finance: Monetising Consented Data & Payment Initiation​

• A2A checkout and pay-by-bank models: improving cost, acceptance, and customer choice

• Turning consented data into smarter credit, collections, and customer experiences

• Liability, authentication and trust: making open finance scalable

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14:30-15:00

KEYNOTE SESSION + Q&A

Merchant Acceptance & Checkout Optimisation:

Higher Conversion, Lower Cost

• Orchestration and smart routing to lift approvals and reduce payment failure

• SCA/3DS strategy, tokenisation and network tokens: frictionless journeys that stay secure

• Disputes and chargebacks: building prevention into the payment experience

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15:00-15:30

NETWORKING COFFEE BREAK

• Follow-up discussions on partnerships, pilots and integrations

• Media/interview windows and press moments

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15:30-16:00

PANEL DISCUSSION + Q&A

Operational Resilience & Third‑Party Risk:

Staying ‘Always‑On’ in Payments​​

• Uptime, incident response, and vendor dependencies: practical resilience playbooks

• Cyber resilience and fraud operations: reducing time-to-detect and time-to-act

• Testing, reporting and governance that boards (and regulators) expect

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16:00-16:30

PANEL DISCUSSION + Q&A

AI Safety & Governance for Financial Institutions​

• Transparency, audit trails and accountability: what ‘responsible AI’ means in practice

• Managing model risk and bias while accelerating innovation

• Building internal guardrails so AI enables growth instead of creating compliance exposure

 

​​16:30-16:35

CHAIRMEN CLOSING COMMENTS 

• Key takeaways for payments, risk, policy and technology

• How to stay engaged after the Forum

 

16:35-18:00

NETWORKING DRINKS RECEPTION

Hosted drinks, informal networking, relaxed follow-up conversations

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