Visa Payments Forum Paris

VPF Paris - Visa Payments Forum Paris is Visa's flagship gathering for the global payments ecosystem, and the Paris edition is its European stage. Running under the banner "Powering Connections", it brings together senior leaders from issuers, acquirers, merchants, processors, and fintech partners to explore where money movement is heading. Held alongside Visa's San Francisco flagship Visa Payments Forum, the Paris forum gives the EMEA payments community its own high-level Visa-hosted moment, with a programme built around peer learning across markets rather than vendor pitching. Visa curates the agenda directly, which gives the event an unusually senior client-and-partner audience.

This edition is capped by a Forum Fête concert headlined by Grammy-nominated OneRepublic at the Maison de la Mutualité in central Paris.

What happens at Visa Payments Forum Paris

• Visionary Talks: a main-stage programme of keynote sessions from payments leaders, technologists, and special guests, framed around the forum's "Powering Connections" theme.
• Deep Dive Sessions: smaller, focused sessions that unpack specific products, rails, and market dynamics in detail for practitioners.
• The Marketplace: a hands-on innovation space where attendees experience new Visa capabilities and partner solutions directly.
• Forum Fête: an evening celebration and concert that anchors the networking side of the event.

Who attends

The room is built from senior payments decision-makers across EMEA: heads of payments and cards at banks and issuers, acquirers and processors, large merchants, and fintech and PSP leadership. Announced speakers include Guillaume Pousaz, founder and CEO of Checkout.com, and Bret Taylor, co-founder and CEO of Sierra, alongside high-profile guests from sport and culture. European institutions such as BNP Paribas, Société Générale, and ING-tier banks are the natural constituency. Visa Payments Forum Paris is not a consumer-fintech event and not a startup pitch event, it is an invitation-led forum for the people who run payments inside established institutions and Visa's partner ecosystem.

Dominant themes at Visa Payments Forum Paris 2026

• Agentic commerce and AI in payments, including how AI agents transact and what that means for authentication and trust.
• Stablecoins and tokenized deposits entering mainstream money movement.
• Tokenisation and the Visa Token Service as the backbone of secure credentials.
• Visa Direct for real-time and cross-border disbursements.
• Click to Pay and the shift away from manual card entry.
• Fraud prevention and risk across an increasingly real-time ecosystem.
• Open banking and account-to-account flows reshaping European payments.
• Market archetypes: how payments maturity differs across EMEA markets.

Planning to attend

The forum is hosted at the Paris Convention Centre, Pavilion 7 at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, 1 Place de la Porte de Versailles, 75015 Paris, France, in the 15th arrondissement, served by Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports. Many delegates arrive from June 30 for registration and the opening evening, so hotels around Porte de Versailles fill early. Delegates building a wider Paris payments trip often pair the visit with Paris Blockchain Week, while those focused on the merchant and acquiring side track Merchant Payments Ecosystem in Berlin earlier in the year.

Use the expense calculator below to estimate the total cost of attending - registration, flights, hotels, meals, and ground transport - based on your origin city.