Fintech hub

A license from one EU member state passports into the other member states, so a founder chooses a fintech city mainly for its supervisor and its customers. London and Zurich are outside the EU, and a firm based there needs a second authorization or has to meet EU rules for clients in the single market. Ten European fintech cities compare as follows, with the main advantage and the main drawback of each one.

Advantages

London is fourth in the Global FinTech Hub Report 2025, the highest place of any European city in that ranking. The Financial Conduct Authority runs a Regulatory Sandbox for tests with real consumers, Innovation Pathways for questions on new business models, a Digital Sandbox with synthetic data and an AI Lab. According to its ScaleUp Institute profile, Level39 at Canary Wharf houses 180 growing businesses whose members have raised more than £1bn.

Drawbacks

A UK license no longer passports into the EU, so a London fintech with clients in Germany or France needs a second authorization from an EU supervisor. When the Brexit transition ended, EU rules also stopped EU investors from trading euro-denominated shares on London venues, and most of that trading moved to Amsterdam.

Advantages

Ireland is an English-speaking common law country inside the EU, and an authorization from the Central Bank of Ireland passports into every member state. Stripe, Coinbase and Google hold Irish payment or e-money authorizations, so the city already has staff who run EU compliance for a group based elsewhere. On 9 April 2024 the Central Bank published its expectations of applicants for payment and e-money licenses, which shows a firm the questions before it files. Ireland counts around 270 domestic and 120 international fintech firms, most of them in Dublin.

Drawbacks

The Central Bank checks whether the Irish entity makes its own decisions or only holds the license for a parent company abroad. An applicant should expect questions on who decides, where the risk function reports and what the Irish board can refuse. A firm whose banks and counterparties are on the continent may find euro settlement easier from a continental city.

Advantages

Paris is tenth in the Global FinTech Hub Report 2025, and Station F gives founders more than 30 programs on one campus. The Banque de France ran twelve wholesale CBDC experiments from March 2020 and tested three models for settlement on a distributed ledger. The AMF has supervised crypto firms since its national PSAN regime, whose requirements it matched to MiCA so that registered firms had a simpler route to authorization in France. After Brexit, Paris also gained trading and investment banking staff from London.

Drawbacks

France splits supervision by activity: the ACPR inside the Banque de France covers banks, payment firms and insurers, and the AMF covers investment and crypto services. A firm that offers payments and investment services answers to both, and the two authorities run a joint fintech forum because firms get stuck at that boundary.

Advantages

The Netherlands has a small home market, so Dutch payment firms such as Adyen build for cross-border use from the start. iDEAL, the account-to-account scheme of the Dutch banks, carries roughly 70 percent of online payments in the country. Euronext runs its operations from Amsterdam, which became the largest share trading center in Europe after Brexit and has engineers for market infrastructure.

Drawbacks

Under the Twin Peaks model a payment firm answers to De Nederlandsche Bank on capital and governance and to the AFM on the treatment of customers. The AFM asks hard questions on governance and money laundering controls, which costs time for a firm in a hurry. Amsterdam also has fewer large banks and asset managers than Frankfurt as institutional customers, and iDEAL is moving into the European wallet Wero.

Advantages

Luxembourg is the largest fund domicile in Europe, so a firm selling to fund administrators, depositary banks and transfer agents finds its customers in one city. The CSSF runs an Innovation Hub for business models outside the usual license categories, and four blockchain laws since 2019 let securities be issued and held on a distributed ledger. Luxembourg for Finance counts more than 250 fintech firms in the country.

Drawbacks

With fewer than 700,000 residents, Luxembourg is too small a home market to build a consumer app on. Most fintech activity in the country needs a license, and the Innovation Hub gives guidance without approving a business model in advance.

Advantages

Swish passed eight million private users in a Sweden of about ten million people, and the Danish MobilePay merged with the Norwegian Vipps in 2022. Nordic banks opened account access before PSD2 required it, and Nordea counted more than 3,300 registered users on its developer portal. Finansinspektionen runs an Innovation Center, and Finanstilsynet lets a firm test a model under supervision in its FT Lab.

Drawbacks

Both countries keep their own currencies, so a firm built on the krona or the krone treats euro settlement as a separate project. The large payment apps belong to the incumbent banks, and the joint Nordic clearing platform P27 withdrew its license application in May 2023. Stockholm Fintech Hub has closed, and Stockholm Fintech Week in March is now the main Swedish meeting point.

Advantages

Go Vilnius says licensing in Lithuania often takes under six months, and the Bank of Lithuania runs a newcomer program and a regulatory sandbox for live tests. Through CENTROlink, launched in 2015, the central bank gives licensed payment and e-money institutions access to SEPA and SEPA Instant without a correspondent bank. Revolut moved its European business to Vilnius after Brexit, and the Bank of Lithuania counted 263 fintech companies at the end of 2022.

Drawbacks

The supervisor has tightened its inspections, and the Bank of Lithuania fined Revolut Bank 3.5 million euros for breaches of money laundering rules. Under MiCA the register of around 850 crypto firms gave way to licensing, and only three crypto firms held a Lithuanian license at the end of 2025. A German bank working with a firm licensed in Vilnius checks its inspection record next to the license.

Advantages

The European Central Bank, ECB banking supervision, the Deutsche Bundesbank and Deutsche Börse are all in Frankfurt, and BaFin has one of its two seats in the city. Banks that needed an EU entity under direct ECB supervision after Brexit placed it here, and Eurex runs the derivatives market. Startup Genome names fintech and cybersecurity as the strongest fields of the Frankfurt startup ecosystem, which has 32 incubators and 10 accelerators.

Drawbacks

Frankfurt has fewer fintechs than Berlin, where the Investitionsbank Berlin counts 189, more than Munich and Frankfurt together. Two parts of the business that left London went elsewhere: cash equity trading moved to Amsterdam, and trading and investment banking staff moved to Paris.

Advantages

The Investitionsbank Berlin counts 189 active fintechs in Berlin, and three quarters of the 32 German fintech scale-ups valued above 100 million euros are based in the city. Berlin attracted 31 percent of German venture capital in 2024, about 2.2 billion euros, according to Berlin Partner. Office costs are lower than in London or Paris, and more than 190 venture capital firms work in the city.

Drawbacks

Finance expertise sits in Frankfurt and Munich, so a Berlin fintech has few large banks nearby and a hard search for staff with finance experience, as The Fintech Times reports. The Investitionsbank Berlin study points to missing money in the pre-seed phase and to too little scale-up financing. Berlin has no supervisor of its own, because BaFin works from Bonn and Frankfurt.

Advantages

SIX runs the Swiss stock exchange and operates the SIC payment system for the Swiss National Bank, which added instant payments on SIC5 in August 2024. The FINMA fintech license lets a firm accept public deposits of up to CHF 100 million without a full banking license. The Greater Zurich Area counted 186 fintech companies in the canton of Zurich in 2025, and 135 more in the canton of Zug.

Drawbacks

A Swiss license does not passport into the EU, so a Zurich firm with EU clients must also meet EU rules such as MiCA for crypto services and DORA for IT services to banks. A firm with the fintech license may neither invest the deposits nor pay interest on them, and its clients have no deposit protection if the firm fails.