Plug and Play Fintech

Banks, insurers and payment firms join as corporate partners, and startups take part at no cost. Plug and Play introduces the startups to the partners' business units, and both sides look at pilot projects and investments. For the Frankfurt program, Crowdfund Insider reported that startups paid nothing to take part and stayed in the network after graduation.

The fintech program lists its focus areas as crypto and digital assets, open banking, payments, regtech, retail banking, sustainability, and wealth and asset management. Plug and Play also invests in startups from its programs: it reports more than 150 investments and nine unicorns.

In February 2018 Plug and Play announced a multi-year partnership with TechQuartier to run its fintech accelerator in Frankfurt. Omeed Mehrinfar, then its regional director for EMEA, said Frankfurt would become the hub for its fintech accelerator work across Europe. The program, Fintech Europe, had Deutsche Bank and TechQuartier as founding partners and was set up for two 12-week batches a year; the first batch of nine startups came from more than 200 applications in July 2018.

Aareal Bank, BNP Paribas, DZ Bank and Nets were among the first corporate partners, as described at fintech in Frankfurt. The current list of Plug and Play locations names Munich and Stuttgart in Germany, not Frankfurt. The Frankfurt startup center that hosted the program was TechQuartier.

Plug and Play lists more than 60 locations and more than 550 corporate partners worldwide. The offices of Plug and Play in Europe include Paris, Munich, Stuttgart, Amsterdam, Vilnius, London, Milan and Vienna. The first programs outside the United States opened in Singapore and Berlin in 2011, according to the company's history page.

In Paris, Plug and Play and BNP Paribas ran a fintech and insurtech program at Station F. In Luxembourg, Plug and Play is a partner of the AI center at the LHoFT. In Vilnius it sits in Lithuania's licensing market for payment firms, covered at fintech in Vilnius.

Plug and Play Fintech is the financial services vertical of Plug and Play, the innovation platform from Sunnyvale in Silicon Valley. Plug and Play Fintech runs accelerator programs in which startups work on pilot projects with banks, insurers and payment firms, and Plug and Play invests in some of those startups.

Yes, Fintech Europe, the fintech accelerator of Plug and Play, launched in Frankfurt in 2018 with TechQuartier and Deutsche Bank as founding partners and was set up for two 12-week batches a year. The current list of Plug and Play locations names Munich and Stuttgart in Germany.

A startup applies to a Plug and Play program, and the corporate partners help pick the batch. The Frankfurt program chose nine startups from more than 200 applications for its first batch, and the startups did not pay to take part.