This year’s Money20/20 made one thing obvious: our customers are leading from the front, and we’re lucky to build alongside them. Experiences replaced decks. Conversations turned into action. You could feel the pace.
The floor felt less like a trade show and more like a working session.
Customers at the Center
We spent most of the week with customers—on the floor, in partner sessions, and at dinner. The pattern was constant: teams came prepared to show real software.
Ben Parks pointed to a meeting with a publicly traded bank: “They referenced the proof-of-concept we built ahead of a board meeting. The use case shifted from theoretical to tangible. The POC was used in the meeting, and it landed. Their work received a standing ovation. That doesn’t happen.”
“We’re on the ground floor of something special,” said Kara Parkey. “Buyers aren’t asking for a pitch anymore. They expect a live, personalized demo they can share. That’s the new baseline.”
That same energy carried through the small moments. At Money20/20, “Greg with Sign” showed up with a simple message: “No one wants to read your API docs.” People stopped, laughed, and took pictures. Customers shared it proudly because it captured how they already see Coast, making complex things simple and having fun doing it.
The Winners Looked Ready Because They Were
“You could tell who was using Coast. They weren’t improvising. They were prepared.” — Lauren Becker
Every booth using Coast had the same advantage: they could show their product in their customers’ world in under a minute. The best booths didn’t promise a follow-up; they put working software in your hands.
Ben captured it well: “Prospects walked away with a live demo link they could circulate. That used to take a sprint. Now it’s expected on first contact.”
That meant more volume and more signal. People stayed longer and asked deeper questions. This shift changed outcomes:
- Champions can re-tell the story internally without losing fidelity.
- Compliance, operations, and engineering can see the same flow, so decisions move faster.
- Teams showcase product depth (timeouts, retries, varying user journeys) up front, which builds trust and shortens evaluation.
Lauren saw the preparation pay off: “Teams came in with personalized demos for dozens of named meetings. The conversation started where it usually ends.”
The Market is Moving Fast
Across conversations, a few themes kept surfacing:
- Cross-border and stablecoin infrastructure: Less “if,” more “how safely and how soon.” Teams want to route across rails and reconcile once.
- Vertical SaaS to operating system: Finance features are becoming ERP-like workflows; demos have to show the full journey, not a single endpoint.
- AI and agentic workflows: Closed-door sessions focused on “agentic commerce” and where automation should own the next step versus escalate. As Kara noted, “AI moved from perceived risk to risk mitigator. You have to be in the room, and when you can’t be, your demo has to be.”
Moments We Won’t Forget
- Our customer dinner: senior leaders from banks, fintechs, and platforms choosing to spend the evening with us. Ben said it plainly: “Customers don’t hug vendors. They hug partners.”
- Partners using Coast as a portable artifact—live on stage, then as a leave-behind that kept working after the conference closed.
- Hearing live reactions from people discovering Coast for the first time never gets old. Things like, “Who knew APIs could be so cool?” and “Don’t tell my product team, but now I finally know what my product does.”
One Word to Describe the Week
We asked the team for a single word and what it means for our roadmap.
Kara Parkey — momentum
The market’s momentum is unmistakable. Last year we were introducing what Coast could do; this year we were surrounded by enterprise partners and household names, all moving in the same direction. We’ll keep removing friction from first demo to shared artifact so champions can move an organization, not just a meeting.
Ben Parks — signal
Walking the floor at Money20/20 is like conducting due diligence on the entire financial infrastructure stack simultaneously. Every booth, every demo station, every hushed conversation in the hallways follows a predictable arc: sophisticated technical architecture colliding with the fundamental challenge of showing what it actually does and why it is valuable.
Greg Thome — fast
Market speed and intentionality are the headline. Standards, rails, and buying cycles are compressing, and we’re seeing ‘built-for-you’ experiences emerge before the signature. It’s making B2B more efficient than ever. We’ll keep developing the technology and playbooks that accelerate this shift, closing the gap between idea and artifact so customers can show what’s next while the window is open.
Lauren Becker — energy
Energy was everywhere, and it was practical. Customers brought real data, real flows, and clear next steps. We’re grateful for that momentum. We’ll focus on experiences that channel it: fast starts, grounded examples, and shareable links the same day, so progress keeps compounding.
Closing the Loop
We left Money20/20 grateful and focused. Our job is to make our customers’ products obvious, portable, and impossible to misunderstand to help spread their mission. Walking the floor and seeing Coast at the center of so many real conversations reinforced why we’re here.
Back to work.
