"Ripped from the Headlines” is a pretty dramatic title for a session. But before jumping to any conclusions, it’s Smarter Faster Payments 2024, so it won’t be headlines you see at the supermarket checkout. What will it be?

“We don’t know yet. The whole idea of ‘Ripped from the Headlines’ is I have a group of people on stage, and their job is four or five days before the event they’re going to send me two or three headlines that they’ve seen that they thought were interesting,” said Peter Tapling, APRP, Managing Director, PTap Advisory, LLC. Tapling expects some likely subjects will include regulations and banking as a service, which he called “a hot topic.” The audience will also get to pick a topic at the May 7 session, one of just many at Payments, May 6-9 in Miami Beach.

You’ll want to head straight from Tapling’s session to the Accreditation Awareness Center, sponsored by NEACH and located inside the exhibit hall, to attend a session with Joseph Casali, AAP, APRP, NCP, Executive Vice President, NEACH. The Center is home to sessions giving a glimpse into what AAP or APRP candidates might expect to learn when preparing for those exams.

“My class is on ACH file formats, which is usually ignored as a ‘the computers will take care of that.’ But when something goes wrong, people need to dig in a little bit and say, ‘Why did that go wrong?’” said Casali.

Casali encouraged anyone considering sitting for the AAP or APRP exam to come by the Accreditation Awareness Center, which he said is “all about kind of sampling the accreditations, what sort of content is covered. We will go through a series of courses highlighting parts of the content for the accreditations,” said Casali. “It’s sort of like a test drive of the accreditation.”

Asked on Nacha’s Payments SmartCast podcast about the importance of attending Payments, Casali said “it’s like my senior prom,” a description that resonated with Stephanie Prebish, AAP, APRP, CTP, Nacha Senior Managing Director, Association Services.

“We are going to embrace ‘Payments Prom,’” she laughed. As for who’s going to the “prom,” Prebish said, “Anybody who’s anybody in the payments space is going to be at this event,” with those already registered including representatives of financial institutions, fintechs, service providers, government agencies and corporates.

Much more was discussed in the podcast. Listen to the complete recording 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.