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Why Payments Are The Next Frontier For Power and Partnerships
Payments; The Attention Economy & Our Community Round Up
EVOLVE Commerce Club
June 08, 2025
Welcome to This Week’s dispatch
In this week’s edition:
The week ahead - The attention economy isn’t what you think.
Insights from the inside with Rodrigo Cerón, former Marketing Leader at Comscore.Europe is FINALLY awakening for partnerships
Community Round Up
Join us in Brazil
A quick word about our Community Sponsor
Airmeet - Built for Real Engagement
Airmeet stands out by designing for connection in a sea of platforms chasing leads. It’s used by companies like Walmart, Accenture, and the University of Toronto, yet it works just as well for emerging communities like ours. We’ve trusted and partnered with Airmeet to run 60+ expert sessions. It’s reliable, intuitive, and built for human interaction, not just metrics.
If you host events where relationships matter more than registrations, Airmeet is worth a closer look
Now onto this week’s newsletter
🗓️ The Week Ahead
The attention economy isn’t what you think Rodrigo Cerón - Marketing Expert, Founder Marketerops - Former Global head of Mkt Commscore | Rodrigo Cerón, former Head of Marketing at Comscore, joins us to share what most brands get wrong about data, media, and measuring what matters. As someone who spent years on the inside of one of the world’s leading measurement firms and is now navigating a career transition. He brings a rare perspective on how marketing is evolving and what leaders should pay attention to. Whether you're refining your strategy or rethinking your next move, this session offers honest insights for anyone shaping the future of commerce. What we will explore
When: 12/06 - 5 pm CET |
Payments Are the Next Frontier for Power and Partnerships
With the recent events, I’m talking Musk, Trump, multiple wars unfolding at once, a weakening dollar, and a world that feels like it’s teetering on some kind of collapse there’s also something else happening:
A ( not so) quiet but significant movement of entrepreneurs, companies, and policymakers taking action.
Wero, the new digital wallet born out of the European Payments Initiative, is part of that shift.
It's not just another fintech product it's Europe saying enough to relying on U.S. platforms to move its money.
It's a strategic response to years of fragmentation in the payments space, and a long-overdue attempt to build something that works across borders, across systems, with European values at its core.
The correlation with EVOLVE?
Everything.
Our members operate across regions.
Many are building or advising companies that depend on seamless, trustworthy, real-time payments.
You can’t grow global commerce without global infrastructure and yet, until now, even Europe lacked that.
This isn’t just about payments. It’s about who sets the rules
Here’s the non-obvious insight:
This isn’t just about payments.
It’s about who sets the rules.
Who owns the rails. Who gets the data.
And if you're not at the table shaping that you’re on the menu.
Pay attention to Wero.
Because payments are becoming political.
Partnerships are becoming strategic.
And commerce is no longer local by default it’s cross-border, collaborative, and being rebuilt in real time.
Carlos Monteiro
Founder
EVOLVE Commerce Club
What We’re Watching
Global Commerce Alliances & Tech Partnerships
Revolut & Worldline Join European Payments Initiative (EPI)
Revolut and Worldline have expanded the EPI‑powered “Wero” payment network to millions of e-commerce clients, following previous launches with Nexi and Nuvei. This move signifies growing pan‑European alignment on unified digital transactions
Source: EPI Company
USC Viterbi + BITS Pilani Form Global AI/Education Alliance
USC’s Engineering School signed an MoU with India’s BITS Pilani to launch a dual B.E.–M.S. pathway, joint research, and AI collaboration—strengthening cross‑border educational ecosystems
Source: USC
Technology & Future of Work
Anthropic CEO: AI Threatens 50% of Entry‑Level White‑Collar Jobs
Dario Amodei warns AI may eliminate half of entry‑level office roles within five years unless businesses and governments act responsibly
Source: Business Insider
DeepMind CEO: AI Can ‘Colonize Galaxies’—But Human Jobs Remain Essential
Demis Hassabis highlights AI’s extraordinary capabilities while affirming that certain human roles particularly those requiring empathy and context—AI can never fully replace
Source: Economic Indian Times
Zoho Co‑founder Flags AI’s Risk of Economic Inequality
Sridhar Vembu emphasizes that the real danger of AI lies in amplifying wealth gaps—not job loss—if economic benefits aren’t shared fairly
Source:Indian Times
A quick work about our community partner
ARC is a phone case brand created by a group of Dutch entrepreneurs who asked a simple question: Why do phone cases have to be ugly, boring, and saltless?
The answer is, they don’t.
ARC makes minimalistic cases that actually enhance the look and feel of your phone. Clean design, strong protection, and no unnecessary branding.
They’re not just partners they’re part of this community.
And we love supporting products that reflect the same values we do: thoughtful design, long-term thinking, and doing things differently
Check it out today Arc Pulse and EVOLVE Club members have 15% off.
Some of our club members currently lead or have led world leading commerce organizations
Community Round Up
Evolve Expert Sessions
Expert Session #63 - Ignacio Villanueva
In this Expert Session, EVOLVE Co-Founders Carlos Monteiro and Gustavo Valle sit down with Ignacio Villanueva, partner at boutique M&A advisory L40, to explore what every founder, operator, and growth-stage leader needs to know about mergers and acquisitions in today’s landscape.
Ignacio shares what strategic buyers and private equity firms are looking for, how to think about clean financials, when to start preparing for exit, and why international expansion can often add more complexity than value.
VOICES Podcast
#029 - Growth, Grit & Strategic Advisory
In this episode of Evolve Voices, host Mayssa Nasr welcomes Carine Assouad a senior executive advisor and business leader with deep expertise in venture capital, F&B, and business transformation across the MENA region.
Case Study: From Sweden to the Middle East
How EVOLVE IS ENABLING ISM to Expand
Meet Mikaela Eigelsreiter,
Founder of ISM, a Swedish-based agency helping advertisers and agencies unlock the full potential of Microsoft Advertising.
She’s led retail media for top-tier companies.
She started her own agency. (Which — let’s be honest — deserves massive respect.)
And like many founders, she was looking for a community that actually helps.
A few months ago, Mikaela joined the EVOLVE Commerce Club.
Soon after, her team spotted an opportunity:
Microsoft Advertising was gaining traction in the Middle East — a region with room to grow and few local experts.
She asked:
“How can EVOLVE help?”
We introduced her to Mayssa Nasr, our Middle East lead.
Mayssa then connected her to Bechara Haddad, EMBA, a seasoned business development leader in the region.
Mikaela flew to Riyadh for an event.
Stopped over in Dubai.
Met Bechara in person.
And now?
ISM is accelerating in the Middle East.
It all started with a conversation.
With local insight.
And with people who care about helping each other move forward.
You can go alone.
Or you can plug into something real.
From the Community
Events from our partners
June - Digital 1:1
Alicante Spain - 18th and 19th june
a closed ecosystem and location exclusively for top digital industry leaders.Leaders in the digital industry with all the amenities and the right format to connect and cooperate with each other effectively.
Learn more
Forum Ecommerce Brasil
Forum E-commerce Brasil is the largest digital commerce event in LATAM over 30,000 participants across three intense days.
It brings together the entire ecosystem: brands, retailers, tech players, and investors from across Brazil and the region.
This year, EVOLVE will be there.
We’re hosting a private dinner for 40 world-class founders, investors, and senior professionals shaping the future of commerce.
We’ll also have members from our community joining us inside the Forum exchanging ideas, building relationships, and exploring what’s next.
Want to be part of it?
Let’s talk
Check our program
Our Upcoming Expert Sessions
 18/05- Aytun Alakus - Turkey |  19/05 -Zoe Roswell - U.K |
Time to Evolve
We now have an official map of our meetups for 2025:
London.
Berlin.
Copenhagen
Madrid.
São Paulo.
Cairo.
Bucharest.
Dubai.
Riyadh.
Each one is an invitation to step outside the silo and into real conversations with senior operators shaping the future of commerce.
If you're interested in partnering with EVOLVE, sharing your events, activating our community, or co-creating something with purpose
Click below to explore how we collaborate.
No noise. Just alignment.
Keep the conversation going in our WhatsApp group and Exclusive Mighty Networks community, that’s where real connections happen.
Make sure to follow our newsletter, where we highlight what’s shaping our club. In the coming months, we’ll be announcing new partnerships, events, meetups, and the opportunities our members are creating together.
