2026 Identity & Payments Summit Agenda: Deepfake Defense, Quantum-Resistant Transactions and The Digital Identity Revolution

Speaker lineup features industry luminaries from Google, Airbnb, Giesecke+Devrient, Bank of America, HID, Verifone and many more

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Feb. 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Secure Technology Alliance today unveils the full agenda for the 2026 Identity & Payments Summit. The Summit is the premier event of its kind in North America, exploring how payments, identity and trust are intrinsically linked to deliver secure, frictionless experiences across technological interactions.

The conference will take place March 2-4, 2026, at the Westin Galleria in Houston, bringing together hundreds of attendees for three days of timely insights, real-world case studies and cross-industry collaboration. This year’s Summit will also be co-located with optional on-site training courses for those looking to expand their professional repertoire. The courses will cover payments and mobile driver’s license (mDL) fundamentals and AI deepfakes. For more details, visit: https://www.stasummit.com/on-site-training/

Day One

March 2nd will serve as a pre-conference day, featuring two exclusive events: the Mobile Driver’s License (mDL) Technology Showcase and the U.S. Payments Forum’s Spring Member Meeting.

The mDL Technology Showcase will spotlight the expanding role of mobile driver’s licenses in fraud reduction and secure authentication while enabling users to maintain control over their data. The Showcase will bring together mDL manufacturers, issuers and relying parties for hands-on demonstrations of real-world mDL use cases, including online bank onboarding, point-of-sale age verification, TSA identity verification, reusable identity verification (IDV) for remote proofing and more.

Held concurrently, the U.S. Payments Forum Spring Member Meeting will offer an opportunity for meaningful, cross-industry collaboration and professional development. The meeting agenda will examine timely payment priorities, with sessions covering token lifecycle management, the Forum’s work on agentic commerce and practical guidance on digital identity credentials. To round out the meeting, members will convene for a highly anticipated Merchant and Issuer Special Interest Group and Working Committee breakout sessions.

Day Two

The Summit officially begins March 3 with an exciting keynote address, “Building Trust with Strangers – Identity’s crucial role in a safe payments ecosystem,” featuring Michael Schweiger, Chief Compliance Officer, Payments, EEA at Airbnb. It will delve into important EU regulatory updates and lessons learned from Airbnb’s digital identification implementations to prepare the U.S. market.

Day two will also feature general sessions designed to spark conversation across the ecosystem, including “The New Face of Fraud: Identity, AI and the Next Generation of Threats” with Lucy Chen from Gifted Books, a “Future Outlook” fireside chat with Cody Banks from Velera and Jelena Hoffart from SentiLink, and an interactive discussion on how payments and digital ID acceptance are coming together in real-world examples, led by Yash Shah from Credence ID and Fernando Herkenhoff from HID Global.

This year’s agenda features three specialized tracks spanning identity and access, payments and emerging/converging technology. On day two, sessions include:

Identity & Access Track (Sponsored by Socure)

• Privacy-by-design strategies to accelerate mDL adoption
• How deepfakes bypass human trust and what layered defenses can do
• Biometric identity verification to mitigate enterprise identity fraud
• Practical approaches to strengthening identity assurance while reducing friction

Payments Track (Sponsored by Discover Network)

• Biometrics-initiated transactions and what it will take to scale
• How EMVCo is advancing digital identity and payments, including passkeys and digital credentials
• Agentic commerce: emerging questions from merchant, issuer/processor and network perspectives
• Identity-centric security as the “new currency” for next-generation payments risk

Emerging/Converging Technology Track (Sponsored by Bank of America)

• Modern authentication without the friction
• The convergence of mobile, AI and authentication—and the opportunities ahead
• Quantum key distribution and “unhackable by design” cryptography concepts
• Managing cryptographic sprawl and preparing for post-quantum transitions

Day Three

The Summit’s final day will dive back into each track with additional future-focused sessions on:

Identity & Access Track

• The state of the mDL ecosystem: data, trends and strategies to move forward
• Leveraging digital ID to modernize transit benefits and improve equitable mobility
• Building a global trust network for digital identity and cross-border interoperability
• Reimagining professional identity in the AI era: authenticity, uniqueness and credibility

Payments Track

• Secure tap-free payments and new UWB opportunities for transit and commerce
• Concierge payments: human-centered service as a fintech differentiator
• Payments automation: where it delivers value and where it may introduce risk
• Transit systems and the intersection of payments and identity

Emerging/Converging Technology Track

• From KYC to KYA: building trust in agent-driven commerce
• Deepfakes in hiring and the rise of AI-enabled insider threats
• A new framework for distinguishing humans from AI via behavioral dynamics
• Trust frameworks for resilient identity-payments ecosystems in the GenAI era

Industry professionals, including issuers, merchants, processors, integrators, and consultants, are encouraged to attend the Summit. Registration details are available on the Summit website. For updates, follow the Secure Technology Alliance on LinkedIn and join the conversation using #IdentityPaymentsSummit.

About the Secure Technology Alliance  
The Secure Technology Alliance is the digital security industry’s premier association. Through its U.S. Payments Forum, Identity and Access Forum and its collaborative working groups, the Alliance fosters open dialogue among industry stakeholders to explore and develop secure technology innovations in the payments, identity and access markets. By collaborating on education and guidance, the Alliance helps enable efficient, timely and effective implementation of large-scale, disruptive technologies.

Contact:  
Sherlyn Rijos-Altman
Montner Tech PR
Srijos@montner.com

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