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Keynote SpeakerDave Birch

Author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services. He is an international keynote speaker and recognised thought leader in digital identity and digital money

David is Principal at 15Mb Ltd., his advisory practice, and Global Ambassador for Consult Hyperion, the secure electronic transactions consultancy. He is Non-Executive Chairman of Digiseq Ltd and holds a number of other board-level advisory roles with companies in Europe and the USA including Tillo, PaymentWorks, Au10tix and YourSafe. He... Read more

Topics

Popular Talks

Digital Identity
Digital Money
Central Bank Digital Currency
Digital Assets
Really Smart Wallets: The Next Frontier Of The Global Economy

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Biography

He is an Honorary President of EEMA, the European e-ID Association, a Senior Research Fellow at King’s Business School in London and a Digital Fellow at the University of Exeter Business School’s DIGIT Lab.

Once named one of the global top 15 favourite sources of business information (Wired magazine) and one of the top ten most influential voices in banking (Financial Brand), he created one of the top 25 “must read’ financial IT blogs and was found to be one of the top ten Twitter accounts followed by innovators, along with Bill Gates and Richard Branson (PR Daily). Ranked one of 2022’s global top 30 fintech influencers, he is one of the top three most influential people in London’s FinTech community (City A.M.) and rated Europe’s most influential commentator on emerging payments (Total Payments).

He is a contributor at Forbes, a columnist for Financial World magazine and has written for publications ranging from the Parliamentary IT Review to The Financial Times. He also wrote a column in The Guardian for many years. A media commentator on electronic business issues, he has appeared on BBC television and radio, Sky and other channels around the world.

Launched in April 2024 at Money 20/20 Asia, his latest book, “Money in the Metaverse”, co-authored with Victoria Richardson focuses on bridging the gap between the creators of metaverses and financial services strategists looking to create value from virtual worlds, digital assets and digital identity. The goal is to facilitate more efficient interactions between the stakeholders and more effective development of smart strategies for business today.

His last book “The Currency Cold War”, looked at the significant economic and political ramifications of the move towards digital money and examines both private and central bank digital currency basics to conclude that business and government strategies for digital currency should be a priority.

His previous book “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From money we understand to money that understands us” was published in 2017 with a foreword by Andrew Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England. In the London School of Economics (LSE) Review of Books it was described as a timely and illuminating contribution which should be widely read by graduate students of finance, financial law and related topics, as well as policy makers involved in financial regulation.

The London Review of Books called his first book “Identity is the New Money” (2014) fresh, original, wide-ranging and the best book on general issues around new forms of money.

David graduated from the University of Southampton with a B.Sc (Hons.) in Physics. Before helping to found Consult Hyperion in 1986, he spent several years working as a consultant in Europe, the Far East and North America.

"Anything from David Birch is worth the price of admission..just provides fascinating insight." John Toua

"We booked Dave to come and speak at a company event, and what I was particularly delighted about was the number of people who aren't technical by nature or role in Moneyhub who are now so keen to know more about biometrics, blockchain and AI - to the point where they've gone off to do more research!" Sam Seaton, CEO of Money Hub Enterprise

"They very much liked your framing and presentation. Breaking fluff down in an understandable manner and linking it to language and framing that they understand. Great communication!!" Global Fintech Venture Firm

"Thank you so much for yesterday. I think you did a really great job of holding the day together and finding those threads between the sessions for us." Marketing Director at LexisNexis Risk Solutions

"It was a pleasure to have you at the conference and your opening keynote definitely hit the spot." Reconnaissance International

"Dave was, as always, absolutely fantastic! His presentation was engaging and we had a very stimulating panel discussion. It is always such a pleasure with Dave." PaymentsNZ

Popular Talks by Dave Birch

Identity Is The New Money
This talk draws on recent experiences advising at board level in Europe, North America and Asia to explore the impact of the pandemic on the payments industry. The analysis exploits a simple high level model of financial institutions to facilitate communication between business and technology groups to look at the impact...

This talk draws on recent experiences advising at board level in Europe, North America and Asia to explore the impact of the pandemic on the payments industry. The analysis exploits a simple high level model of financial institutions to facilitate communication between business and technology groups to look at the impact of the virus and examine some early evidence of longer-term change, and goes to suggest some key fintech/regtech areas of opportunity. I touch on subjects including open banking, liquidity, digital identity, government stimulus, contact-free services, cashlessness, omnichannel access and fraud protection.
Generative AI in Payments & Financial Services
A quarter of a century ago, on the internet nobody knew you were a dog. Now they don’t know if you’re a fridge pretending to be a dog. Pretty soon they won’t know if you’re a North Korean bot pretending to be a Japanese fridge pretending to be an American...

A quarter of a century ago, on the internet nobody knew you were a dog. Now they don’t know if you’re a fridge pretending to be a dog. Pretty soon they won’t know if you’re a North Korean bot pretending to be a Japanese fridge pretending to be an American dog. In a world of fake identities and fake news, where it is your nanny cam and your newsfeed getting hacked not your credit card, we need to accept that trying to digitise identity hasn’t worked and we need to start creating a new kind of identity for the new digital age instead. We need to stop trying to import those analogue identity models, rooted in Industrial Age bureaucratic hacks to deal with urban anonymity and develop notions of identity for a digital age. This is not a technical talk to teach someone how to write computer software about identity. This is an attempt to build an overarching narrative about identity in the digital age. It is a narrative that I hope will bring together policy makers, regulators, entrepreneurs and technologists to form and deliver the identity we need for our new digital world where robots and everything else will have passports because they have identities, relationships and reputations. What those robots won’t have, of course, is the one crucial stamp in their passports that we will have in ours: IS_A_PERSON. To advertisers, to journalists, to voters, to shopkeepers and to others, this credential will become the essential prerequisite for the most important transactions.
Financial Services in the Metaverse
The Dollar’s dominance gives America the ability to exert soft power through the International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS). A serious implication of replacing existing monetary arrangements with new infrastructure based on digital currency is that this power might be constrained. Whether you think it might be a good thing or...

The Dollar’s dominance gives America the ability to exert soft power through the International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS). A serious implication of replacing existing monetary arrangements with new infrastructure based on digital currency is that this power might be constrained. Whether you think it might be a good thing or not, you need to think about what it means for you, your business and your country. In this talk I will try to set out the economic and technological imperatives, discuss the potential impact on the IMFS and highlight a series of tensions—between public and private, and (most importantly) between East and West—to contribute to the necessary high-level debate that we must have to begin to shape the IMFS of the near-future. And I’ll try to make a few positive suggestions about a national digital currency strategy.
History and Future of Money
This talk is about the future of money. More specifically, it centres on the idea that technology might be taking money back to its past, back to a more local and diverse version of money than we are used to. It explores the interplay between the technological evolutionary tree of...

This talk is about the future of money. More specifically, it centres on the idea that technology might be taking money back to its past, back to a more local and diverse version of money than we are used to. It explores the interplay between the technological evolutionary tree of money and its social context, and brings in ideas from the social sciences in conjunction with technology forecasting to create an informed view of where technology is taking money. Given that this direction of travel is broadly towards decentralization, distribution and an overall lessening of state power, it is possible to bring input from disciplines including social anthropology and the study of ‘palaeo- futures’ (that is, what people used to think about the future) to make an informed and, I hope, surprising prediction about the future of money. This is that we will return to the multiple, overlapping community monies of the past but that they will be smart monies, monies with values, monies that know about us.
Digital Identity
Digital Money
Central Bank Digital Currency
Digital Assets
Really Smart Wallets: The Next Frontier Of The Global Economy
Data, Payments, Identity: The Digital Infrastructure That Every Country Needs
Innovation In Digital Finance: AI? Blockchain? Embedded? Where Should Strategists Focus Next?