In this episode of the Connector Podcast, recorded live at the Digital Finance Summit in Brussels, host Koen Vanderhoydonk interviews Valentina Caruso, COO of Bankcontact Payconic. Valentina explains that Payconic is a leading Belgian payment‑solution provider serving both consumers and merchants through a network of partners. She outlines how the market has expanded with new operators, how PSD2 opened regulatory opportunities that allowed Payconic to become a payment institution with direct merchant and consumer relationships, and how consumer adoption accelerated post‑COVID‑19. The conversation highlights three current innovations: the ability to pay with meal vouchers via the Payconic app, a forthcoming digital‑invoice payment experience, and a newly launched merchant app that lets merchants generate payments. Valentina emphasizes the modular nature of the payments space, where competitors can also be collaborators, and describes Payconic’s open‑door approach to fintech partnerships. Regarding regulation, she frames PSD2 as a blessing that creates business opportunities, while acknowledging that not all rules are conducive to innovation. The discussion then turns to emerging technologies, with a focus on generative AI (GenAI). Payconic is conducting cautious internal pilots—primarily in operations and customer‑care—to assess risks such as hallucinations before any consumer‑facing rollout. When asked about geographic expansion, Valentina notes that Payconic’s core mission remains Belgian‑centric; international reach occurs indirectly through partner networks rather than direct market entry. Looking ahead, she describes a strategic “true north” of delivering valuable payment solutions for Belgium, supported by a continuously refreshed pipeline of initiatives that respond to market shifts and new technologies. The episode concludes with contact details for Valentina (LinkedIn and email) and a reminder to follow the Connector Podcast for future insights.
Chapters
Welcome to the Connector Podcast, an ongoing conversation connecting fintechs, banks, and regulators worldwide. Join CEO and founder Koen Vanderhoydonk as you learn more about the latest available trends and solutions in the markets.
Welcome to another episode of our Connector and Belgium Fintech Podcast, streaming live from the Digital Finance Summit in Brussels. And now I have somebody with me who's in the market for such a long time. So I'm super proud to have you guys. It's Valentina representing Bankcontact Payconic. But can you explain to the audience who you are and what you guys do?
Yeah, sure. Hello, I'm Valentina. I'm the Chief Operating Officer of Bankcontact Payconic. And Bankcontact Payconic is a provider of payment solutions for the Belgian market. People that will listen will probably recognize Bankcontact and Payconic as really household brands, products that you use to pay your peers, your friends, in a shop, online. And that's what we do. We provide the solutions to the market indirectly via network of partners and directly to our own merchant and consumer portfolio.
Oh, great. And that's predominantly in the Belgian market?
Yes, we are really an operator in the Belgian market for the Belgian consumers and merchants.
And that's why I'm so proud because I'm Belgian too. What brings you actually to DFS and what would you like to get out of it?
Yeah, so we are a partner as a company of FinTech Belgium since the beginning. So it's years that we are iterating and co-creating with all the fintechs that are members. Coming here now, I already just was greeting people in the corridor left and right because we know so many. We have really been doing nice business with them. And today I'm representing the company and hope to give good insights and get some from the others.
Nice, nice. It's good that there's people that have a long outside relationship and have a strong belief in all the good things that are happening within the Belgium innovation industry. Well, in your view, talking about digital payments, the landscape is sort of evolving in the recent years. What do you think, or what has been the role for your company in this bigger play?
Yeah. So indeed, the market has grown. So that's the first thing. There are a lot of new operators that have come in the market in the last years. For us, it was a very good thing because we provide solutions also to them. So obviously, it's more business opportunity. It's new value proposition that you can bring to the market. So this is one thing, more actors. The second is there have been new opportunities also brought by regulation, the PSD2. And we as a company have taken advantage of those opportunities in the first hand. So now, for example, we are operating as a payment institution directly, meaning we have direct contacts with merchants and consumers. And the third one that's also interesting for all of us here, it's— there's really been a shift in consumer adoption, especially in the realm of digital payments. People in the last years, also due to COVID-19 obviously, have really been interested in trying digital payments and they've stuck with them. So obviously for us, it's a new playing field and it's a very rich one.
And can you share with us some of the innovative things that you brought to the market?
Okay, so I'm working here—
Only a few.
Yeah, indeed. I'm working here since 4 years and we've never stopped pushing things out. But we've been looking, working right now at 3 important things. The first one is our consumers can already pay with meal vouchers in our app. But this is such an interesting space where consumers really are interested in doing more and doing extra things. So we're working on that. We're also working at an experience around digital invoices. So how you can easier pay your invoice in our app. And then this is going to come around January. And then very proud to say last week we launched our merchant app. So our merchants have their own app with which they can generate a payment. Launched last week. We are contacting our merchants last 48 hours. Wonderful pickup. So we are really excited.
And still you're here.
And I'm still here, but there's other people at the office managing all the requests.
So you're sort of happy to be at the event today and not to be in the office. Okay. Well, I think you mentioned that earlier that there is indeed a lot of increase in competition, but competition also means collaboration. You already pointed that out. But when you look yourself at, well, you called merchants a lot, but how would you find yourself against, for example, fintechs?
Yeah. So the nice thing, which is, I think, quite peculiar to payments, is that companies that compete on product A also can collaborate on product B. So it's quite modular. You're not only a competitor or only a partner. And that's how we look at this thing. So we really look at other companies, other fintech, in, okay, can we do something together? And we are really not closing collaborations. as a way of doing business.
Okay, understood, understood. Well, regulation is a thing in our industry, regardless of your payment investments, anything you talk about. You already called up open banking, PSD2, PSD3 is coming. How do you look at regulations? Is it a blessing or is it a curse? To be very direct. Both. Meaning— To be very direct.
To be very direct. Meaning, The payment industry is highly regulated, and obviously because it touches people's money. But compared to other functional areas, we had the blessing of having regulations like PSD2 that really created new opportunities. It created the market, a new way of looking at things. It's not like that always with other areas. So that's how we're looking at things. Does this regulation bring opportunities? We hope also that the regulator sees it like we do, so really trying to create new things. But this is how we approach it standard.
Thank you.
If that creates values to our consumers, to our merchants, and so to ourselves, that's where we're going to look for that opportunity.
So you would actually say that you use regulations to innovate?
Yeah, we try to do so. I mean, not every piece of regulation allows that for sure, but there are 2 ways of looking at things. Either it's a constriction and only a constriction, or you can also take some good business ideas or good business opportunities out of that.
I personally also agree with the latter. I think that makes sense. Well, you guys are in the middle of the payment field and I just come back from Singapore, Singapore FinTech Festival. And well, it's amazing to see what is the innovation happening, for example, in Asia. But what do you see as like the most emerging technologies that are happening within your space?
I mean, it's really full. The agenda is really full today about GenAI, generative intelligence. What's GenAI?
Did not hear about it.
Brand new thing. So we are really looking at that. That, as I think everybody else in this conference. We are obviously trying to pitch the opportunities. We also see the risks of that because when you start thinking, we were saying before, we look at opportunities and the opportunities are huge potentially. But when you start thinking about putting that untested technology in front of the consumers and then you hear about GenAI tools hallucinating and saying strange things, That's where you start saying, okay, I mean, are we ready? Do we want to do it now? So the way we are approaching this now is try to test the technology with a selected number of use cases that are only internal. So we're not putting this to the customer yet. We're going to validate the technology. And in case everything goes well as we hope, we're going to scale it to a wider range of use cases.
And I know I'm asking a tricky question. And if the answer is no, that's totally fine. But are you able to reveal a little bit of the project that you're doing internally?
We are. So we started with really internal use cases, and the internal use cases are mainly in the area of our operations and our customer care, because customer care is a department that goes inside, so internal processes, but also potentially to the consumer. So it's the easiest one to test it without impacting negatively. the consumer, but also with the potential of bringing outwards the fastest. That's the range that we are looking at.
Thank you for answering that question. Now we are in a questioning mode in terms of difficult questions. I mean, Bankcontact Payconic, as you said in the beginning, it's very active on the Belgium markets. Are there any plans to go across the boundaries of Belgium?
Banken van de Piconic really has a Belgian soul, and we do business abroad because indirectly, because some of our partners are active abroad and bring our products abroad. We don't do active or proactive entry in new market. So you will see in our transaction there are a lot of countries that are represented, but that's thanks to our network of partners. We're not setting up shop in other countries in Europe or elsewhere because our Core focus and our really reason to be is the Belgian market.
The Belgian market. Well, now we're looking a bit ahead, long-term visions, goals. It's the time of the year when you sort of reflect. So what is still in shop for Payconic, for Bankcontact Payconic?
A lot. We have a rich pipeline of initiatives. Now obviously the payments payment market—it's like the tenth time we say that—it's very dynamic. It evolves all the time. So making a pipeline that is very specific, it's useful in the short term, perhaps not so useful in the long term. So what we're trying to do is there's— what is our true north? Our true north is valuable payment solutions for the Belgian market. Once you have this in mind, then you do a pipeline of, okay, which USP, which unique selling proposition we can bring, which gap is in the market. I mean, where do we see value? And we create this pipeline. And regularly we revise that pipeline because market conditions have changed, technology is new. I mean, something is not relevant. So it's a recurring reassessment of our priors. That's what we do.
So you will be busy, I guess.
I think so.
I think so too. Well, we're almost at the end of our podcast. And I always like to end up with one specific question. And that's a very simple one. Where can people contact you?
People can contact us via the Pecunia Bankcontact app. You can easily reach us from that channel or from our website, and people can contact me specifically via LinkedIn with my profile or my email address, which is valentina.caruso@bankcontactpecunic.com, which is a long one.
That's a long one. Well, I didn't choose my own last name either. It's a long one too. It is. Valentina, Thank you so much for being in this podcast. I hope you have a blast today at DFS. Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you very much for coming. And thank you also to the audience for tuning in. Stay tuned. More is coming.
See you. Bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Connector Podcast. To connect and keep up to date with all the latest, head over to www.jointheconnector.com or hit subscribe via your podcast streaming platform.
