Fintech in Zurich
Zurich is home to SIX, which runs the Swiss stock exchange and the country's interbank payment system, and to one of the two head offices of the Swiss National Bank. A fintech here can take deposits under FINMA's fintech license, and Swiss Fintech Week brings the Swiss fintech events to the city. Dated events are in the calendar below.
Zurich as a finance city
SIX operates the infrastructure for the Swiss and Spanish financial centers and is owned by around 120 national and international financial institutions. From Zurich it runs the SIX Swiss Exchange, and it operates the Swiss Interbank Clearing (SIC) payment system on behalf of the Swiss National Bank. The SNB has two head offices, in Bern and Zurich; its money market, foreign exchange, asset management and banking operations are for the most part in Zurich.
In August 2024, SIX and the SNB launched instant payments on the SIC5 platform: account-to-account transfers that settle in seconds, 24 hours a day. The Greater Zurich Area, the economic development agency of the region, counted 186 fintech companies in the canton of Zurich in 2025, and 135 in the canton of Zug, the center of Crypto Valley.
Rules and supervision in Zurich
Switzerland is not part of the EU, so a Zurich fintech works under Swiss law. FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, supervises from Bern; Zurich has no regulator of its own. The fintech license under Article 1b of the Banking Act lets a company accept public deposits of up to CHF 100 million, or crypto-based assets, without a full banking license. It may neither invest these deposits nor pay interest on them, and client assets have no deposit protection if the company fails.
A Zurich company with clients in the EU has to meet EU law as well: MiCA for crypto services, and DORA when it supplies IT services to banks and insurers in the EU, whose contracts must give them audit rights and an exit plan.
Upcoming fintech events in Switzerland
Finance Loop and fintech in Zurich
Finance Loop started in Frankfurt and holds events in Munich, Berlin and Hamburg as well. For fintech in Zurich it is the meeting place where bankers, asset managers, founders and IT people from Germany, Austria and Switzerland talk about payments, tokenization and AI in finance. Finance Loop partnered with GFTN for the Point Zero Forum 2026 at the Kongresshaus Zurich. At that forum, 21X and Web3 Network, an event and network partner of Finance Loop, hosted the side event Tokenization & On-Chain Capital Markets with speakers from 21X, Franklin Templeton, DFNS, AMINA and Chainlink.
Several Finance Loop partners work from Zurich. DeFiAM Labs develops layer 2 blockchain solutions for institutional DeFi, and its DeFiAM Network meets mostly at the University of Zurich. S-PRO builds digital banking and tokenization software for banks and fintechs, and Finemetal trades physical gold. Finteda, a practitioner network for finance, technology and data, runs events in Zurich, and the Multichain Asset Managers Association holds a Zurich meetup.
Investment & Digital Assets
Payments & Digital Money
What is Swiss Fintech Week?
Swiss Fintech Week brings the Swiss fintech events together in one week in Zurich, so that founders, banks, investors, regulators and technology providers meet in one place. It is presented by Finanz und Wirtschaft Forum and Tenity, with GFTN as global strategic partner, and its program lists the FuW FinTech Forum, a startup fair, the Startup Night by Tenity with the Swiss Fintech Awards, and the Point Zero Forum.
Does the University of Zurich teach fintech?
Yes. The Swiss FinTech Innovation Lab at the University of Zurich calls itself a cross-disciplinary research program on innovation in the financial industry induced by financial technology. It offers a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in FinTech for professionals and teaches a lecture course on blockchain.
Fintech in Zurich and Finance Loop
Finance Loop partnered with GFTN for the Point Zero Forum in Zurich and works with Zurich partners such as DeFiAM Labs, S-PRO and Finemetal. It connects the finance, IT and AI communities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with events in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin and Hamburg.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the adoption of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, and Risk & Compliance.