During the last week of October, more than 10,000 people from around the world congregated in Las Vegas for the annual Money20/20 conference, an event dedicated to financial technology in all its various flavors. Or as the event bills itself, "Money20/20 is the largest global event focused on payments and financial services innovation for connected commerce at the intersection of mobile, retail, marketing services, data and technology."

With dozens upon dozens of sessions, many of them concurrent and many overlapping, it was impossible for one journalist to fully cover this conference. However, from talking to numerous vendors and attending as many sessions as humanly possible, some important themes did emerge, themes of which credit unions should take note.

Most obvious is the fact that there's big, big money to be made moving payments back and forth. This wealth is realized at the front end, where one can take a tiny amount from a high volume of transactions, and at the back end, where one can profit from the gold mine of data provided by all those transactions. While organizations have long enjoyed that front-end money, it's only now that they're starting to realize the true value of the so-called big data.