DN Intersect 2019 Recap: Built for More

After spending the past several days at the Diebold Nixdorf Intersect event in Las Vegas, I’m back. And, what a difference a year makes.

You may recall that last year at this time, there were rumors swirling about financial difficulties at DN as the company struggled to complete the merger between Diebold and Wincor Nixdorf. DN senior management took the stage to candidly address these issues and ask for patience as the company worked to resolve them. This year the company is riding high, reporting good financial results in Q1 & Q2 of 2019 and now launching an entirely new line of hardware and software products. The swagger was back, and the energy carried over to the customers and partners attending the event

The overall DN event and launch theme of “Built to Connect; Built for More” was expanded into 6 key areas:

• More Personalized
• More Integrated
• More Available
• More Efficient
• More secure
• More Future-Ready

This approach from DN actually “intersects” exactly with where Paragon is headed in the marketplace, i.e. more of anything means more testing of everything.

• More Personalized
  Complete and accurate testing helps ensure no negative consumer experiences, protecting your brand and shareholder value

• More Integrated
  Integrating your payments testing infrastructure with your other enterprise applications via an API helps with Agile development, DevOps, CI/CD, etc.

• More Available
  Comprehensive and end-to-end testing helps ensure that your systems are always up, available, and able to handle transactions volumes with no degradation of service to your consumers.

• More Efficient
  Automating simple and redundant tests means that your staff can focus on higher value activities, like strategy and planning. Automation will also allow you to increase test coverage and throughput, identify bugs earlier, minimize re-work and improve overall quality.

• More Secure
  Centralized administration of your testing infrastructure provides better command and control, better management of roles and permissions, improved security, less project risk, etc.

• More Future-Ready
  The pace of change continues to increase, i.e. more regulation, more competition, new technology, alternative payment methods, and it will not stop. A modern and efficient payments testing infrastructure will give you a competitive advantage, helping you innovate and stay ahead of the pack.

Of course, we did talk about a lot of the current activities, issues and trends taking place within the payments industry

• Windows 10
  There is clearly a lot of activity taking place here, but the consensus of DN partners at the event seemed to indicate that only about 30-35% of organizations will meet the January 2020 deadline to convert off Windows 7. Expect a long-tail on this effort.

• Contactless EMV
  Card issuers are putting a lot of pressure on ATM deployers to solve this one. As we have discussed before, there are several subtleties and nuances that make contactless EMV at the ATM quite difficult to deploy and manage. With that said, I see inter-operable solutions coming in this area soon.

• PCI compliance changes
  I think this quote says it all: “When will it end?!”

• Cash recycling
  Recycling is already very popular in several markets across the globe. Is it time for the US to adopt this technology? Both DN and NCR have made recent product announcement in this area, so they appear ready to invest.

• 5G for ATMs
  Interesting, but too early to see how this may impact the ATM channel

• Nexo/ISO 20022
  A lot of time and money is going into this effort, but it is not readily evident how the new standards will provide a more efficient or secure approach to what is currently in place.

One of the important reasons for attending any event like this is to make connections, hear new ideas and expand your horizons. In addition to one-on-one conversations with customers and prospects at our booth and the usual table talk during meals, there were a couple of great presentations worth highlighting:

Moisés Peña Reyes, Vice President of Digital Banking at Banco Popular in Puerto Rico told a great story, weaving together the long-term digital journey of the bank (which he cleverly started in 1953) with his personal journey through life. He highlighted some of the innovative products and services the bank has put together since then and gave some very compelling statistics to illustrate their success. Very entertaining and inspiring.

Ben Hammersley – one of the event keynotes speakers - also delivered an entertaining and thought-provoking presentation which highlighted the difficulty in planning for the future. His basic premise is that trying to make plans more than a few months into the future is futile and counterproductive. He put words to what we have all been experiencing but may not have been able to conceptualize – that technology, business, culture and politics are now woven together into a single fabric. Change in one area immediately affects all the others. Ben also gave credence to Paragon’s philosophy since you can’t know exactly what to plan for (other than more change), you must put the tools and resources in place that will help you deal with anything. (My takeaway is that I no longer need to worry about detailed planning for 2020…)

Finally, I mentioned in my last post that instead of handing out the usual booth tchotchkes, the DN team arranged to help fill 300 backpacks with school supplies for underprivileged children in the Las Vegas area. I can report that this event within an event went very well. The folks from the Assistance League of Las Vegas were great and were very appreciative and gracious while donating their own time and hands to help the local kids. (I can also tell you 3,000 Bic pens – 300 sets of 10 – weighed 35 pounds and required a good-sized suitcase for transport to the event.)