Fintech Frankfurt

Frankfurt's fintech scene grew on top of an existing finance industry. The European Central Bank, the Deutsche Bundesbank and Deutsche Börse Group sit in the city, and BaFin has one of its two seats here. Startup Genome names fintech and cybersecurity as the fields where Frankfurt's startup ecosystem is strongest, with 32 incubators, 24 coworking spaces and 10 accelerators in the city.

An earlier Startup Genome report, summarized by deutschland.de, found a higher share of fintechs among Frankfurt's startups than in any other location it measured, and 55 percent of the venture capital invested in Frankfurt between 2012 and 2017 went into fintech. The reference exit came from foreign exchange: Deutsche Börse bought the trading platform 360T for 725 million euros, and 360T is now one of its business units.

TechQuartier opened in 2016 at Platz der Einheit and connects more than 750 startups with over 30 corporate partners, investors, universities and institutions. The federal Digital Hub Initiative includes TechQuartier as its fintech hub in Frankfurt. Its Frankfurt hub focuses on financial technology. The programs from TechQuartier include a Digital Finance program for fintech scale-ups, and it opened the Tech & Data Lab Frankfurt, where corporate innovation teams, fintechs, regulators and researchers test financial technology together.

Banks join TechQuartier programs as partners. The Fintech Europe accelerator is run with Plug and Play. Aareal Bank and BNP Paribas signed on as corporate partners. Deutsche Bank was another partner, as were DZ Bank and Nets. The State of Hesse worked out a plan with TechQuartier, companies and the region's universities to make Frankfurt Rhine-Main the leading fintech hub in continental Europe. The region includes Mainz, about 40 kilometers west of Frankfurt, and the S-Bahn line S8 links the two cities in about 40 minutes. Finance Loop is built in collaboration with TechQuartier, so many of its fintech panels take place at TechQuartier.

Frankfurt School of Finance & Management contributes university research and training to Frankfurt's fintech ecosystem. Its Centre for Digital Economics studies digital financial infrastructure and develops prototypes using distributed ledgers. The center's events include the Crypto Assets Conference. The financial center initiative Frankfurt Main Finance has a membership category for fintechs with up to 100 employees.

A fintech in Frankfurt follows the same national rules as one anywhere else in Germany: a BaFin license under the Payment Services Supervision Act (ZAG) for a payments business, or under the Banking Act and the Investment Firm Act for lending and investment services, a MiCA authorization for crypto services, and since 17 January 2025 the EU's Digital Operational Resilience Act for its IT risk management.

CommerzVentures, an independent venture capital firm spun out of Commerzbank and based in Frankfurt, manages roughly 550 million euros across three funds for fintech, insurtech and climate fintech. Founders and investors also meet at the FinTech Founder & Investor Evening, which Finance Loop supported. The page on venture capital in Frankfurt has more on the investors.

Finance Loop is the meeting place for people from banks, fintechs, IT firms and supervisors who work on fintech in Frankfurt. Finance Loop connects the finance, IT and AI communities and is built in collaboration with TechQuartier and Frankfurt Main Finance.

Finance Loop organized TechClub 25/3 with TechQuartier and covered Frankfurt Digital Finance at the Gesellschaftshaus Palmengarten. During Sibos in Frankfurt it organized a side event at TechQuartier with Frankfurt Main Finance and OKX Institutional, and it hosts the Digital Finance Night for teams working on institutional projects.

Frankfurt's fintech ecosystem includes several hubs and professional communities. TechQuartier is a startup hub in the federal Digital Hub Initiative, with programs connecting founders and corporate partners. The financial center initiative Frankfurt Main Finance represents the wider finance industry, while university research includes work on digital financial infrastructure at the Centre for Digital Economics.

For practitioners building financial systems, Finteda offers invitation-only discussions hosted by banks, funds and data firms. Applied AI and data science are the focus of practice-oriented events from Frankfurt Data Science. Founders and other people interested in financial technology can meet through FinTech FFM Meetups, whose evenings combine presentations, startup pitches and networking.

Frankfurt Digital Finance runs at the Gesellschaftshaus Palmengarten, and the Crypto Assets Conference and the Digital Euro Conference cover fintech from the digital assets and payments side. Capital & Code takes on stablecoins and tokenized funds. Another program, AI Week Frankfurt, has a banking and finance day. The Euro Finance Week includes a EURO FINANCE Tech Day. Current dates are in the events calendar.

Frankfurt has no event with that name. Two weeks come close: in spring the Crypto Assets Conference, the Digital Euro Conference and the Digital Finance Night from Finance Loop fall into the same week, and in November Euro Finance Week gathers the banking conferences of the year, with a tech day among them.