Fintech in Berlin

Berlin has no old stock exchange or central bank branch to build a finance scene around. Its fintech companies grew instead out of the city's earlier e-commerce and gaming startups, which left behind engineers and a lower cost of living than London or Zurich. More than a third of German fintechs are based in Berlin today.

The city's own fintech festival, FIBE, brings founders, investors and bankers together each year. Berlin's public investment bank, Investitionsbank Berlin, runs funding programs that several fintechs have used in their early rounds.

A fintech in Berlin answers to the same national and EU rules as one in Frankfurt or Munich. BaFin licenses and supervises banks, payment institutions and investment firms from Bonn and Frankfurt; Berlin has no regulator of its own. Payment and open banking products work under the EU's PSD2, and a Berlin fintech that offers crypto services needs an authorization under MiCA.

A banking-as-a-service platform such as Solaris carries extra weight here: its bank customers rely on its license, so a problem at the platform can affect several brands at once. That is part of why DORA, the EU's digital operational resilience law, treats a bank's technology suppliers as part of its own risk management.

Berlin's fintechs raised money at a pace few other German cities matched, which is part of why N26 and Trade Republic could grow into companies valued in the billions. Investitionsbank Berlin, the state-owned bank for the city, co-invests in early rounds alongside private venture funds and has backed fintech founders through its startup financing programs since well before Berlin fintech became a recognized category.

International capital followed the city's own investors. Berlin-based fintechs have drawn funding from investors based in the United States and across Europe, a pattern that set Berlin apart from Frankfurt, where investment tends to come from banks and asset managers already active in German finance. That difference in investor base shows up in the products too: Berlin's fintechs built consumer apps first and added banking infrastructure and licenses afterward, the reverse of how a bank-led fintech usually starts.

Finance Loop started in Frankfurt and holds events in Berlin, Munich and Hamburg as well. In Berlin it is a meeting place for people who work at the city's neobanks, brokers and banking-as-a-service platforms, alongside bankers, IT people and AI engineers from the wider finance sector.

Finance Loop covered KI Exchange 2026, a Payment & Banking conference on AI as infrastructure for banks and fintechs, and supported the Fintech Founder & Investor Evening in Frankfurt, where several Berlin-based founders and investors took part. Related pages: fintech in Germany, fintech in Frankfurt, fintech in Munich and fintech in Hamburg.

FIBE, the Fintech Festival Berlin, is the city's own fintech conference, with founders, investors and bankers on stage and in the audience. It runs each year in Berlin; the current program and dates are on its own site.