More than 1,000 attendees and 100 exhibitors are gathered today, May 25, at Rosen Shingle Creek for the final day of CNP Expo, a conference and exhibition pertaining to card-not-present transactions, a thriving segment of e-commerce. Merchants such as Amazon, Disney, StubHub, and more that process payments online and via apps are gathered to learn the latest strategies to combat fraud and enhance security.
The event, which began on May 22, is a new addition to the Reed Exhibitions portfolio, and the company redesigned the layout to make attendees cross the exhibit floor to get to everything, creating an enclosed environment and creating more traffic for the exhibitors—similar to the way casinos force visitors through their gaming areas.
“When you go to Las Vegas, in order to get to your hotel room, you have to cross the gaming floor,” said Ed Several, senior vice president for Reed Exhibitions. “So we literally created a floor where the exhibition is in the center and where we are able to have all of the conference sessions accessed from the exhibit floor. It’s all self-contained in what I like to call this casino floor so everyone is all together, including the fact that we are serving breakfast and lunch on the exposition floor.”
Security is also a priority for the event, where merchants and vendors are discussing confidential information about fraud prevention tactics. Several said the new layout facilitates access control, with exhibitors restricted to the central show floor and only vetted merchants allowed to enter the conference rooms. Organizers also created small lounges on the show floor, what Several calls “fireside chat” areas, so attendees have a space to network and discuss their business challenges within the protected environment of the event.
“When you are in a hotel, you have other events that are going on. We were able to self-contain everything in a rectangle, except the registration that is in the foyer. It took a lot of work to find a facility that would enable us to do it,” he said.
