If the title “esquire” follows your name, you might be wondering what a conference called Smarter Faster Payments 2024 has for you. The answer, counselors, is plenty. 

“We’re offering nine legal sessions this year, so you’ll be eligible for up to nine legal credits,” Ashley Mustico, Nacha’s Director of Education and Accreditation, told Nacha’s Payments SmartCast podcast.* Among them, she said, is a “great session on AI and navigating the legal complexities that come with introducing AI into the payments space.” 

There will also be a new “Ask a Payments Attorney” session, which Mustico said is “exactly like it sounds—it’s an opportunity for you to have a sounding board” with payments attorneys and ask the questions on your mind. The conference also features several networking opportunities. 

One attorney who finds great value in Payments is Jennifer Stokley, Nacha General Counsel, who attended Payments for the first time in 2023 and called it “a great experience,” with the value of the sessions “outstanding.”  

“I also found it really valuable to go to sessions that my internal business, compliance or risk partners would like to hear about,” said Stokley, who this year will be a panelist at the session, “Consumer Payments Fraud: Trends and Risk Management.” 

“We’re going to have a number of different perspectives on this panel, and we’re going to talk about the practical examples of how some of these consumer scam scenarios have been playing out,” said Stokley.  

Risk management will be in sharp focus at Payments, including recently approved Nacha Rules to help fight credit-push frauds such as business email compromise. Jordan Bennett, Nacha Senior Director, Network Risk Management, said banks and credit unions should be planning now. 

“The implementation dates look a long way away,” said Bennett, “but they’re not. They’re going to come at you fairly fast, so now is the time to really start thinking about how your financial institution can meet those implementation dates.”  

Much more was discussed in the podcast, including ways for financial institutions to prepare for the new Nacha Rules, and Payments sessions of interest to the legal community as well as sessions focusing on risk management. Listen to the complete podcast here. 

The full podcast is available here. To learn more about—and register for—Smarter Faster Payments 2024, taking place May 6-9 in Miami Beach, Florida, visit the conference website. Information for attorney registration is available here