Station F

The Halle Freyssinet was built as a freight station and named after Eugène Freyssinet, the engineer who patented prestressed concrete. The Halle Freyssinet became a listed historical monument in 2012. The architects Wilmotte & Associés remodeled it for the campus, which has about 34,000 square meters with around 3,000 desks. President Emmanuel Macron opened it formally in June 2017.

Station F gives its address as 5 Parvis Alan Turing, 75013 Paris, and counts more than 1,000 startups on campus at a time.

Startups join Station F through a program. Station F runs its own programs, among them Founders, Fighters, F/ai and Landing. Companies and schools run the others in their own space on the campus: the program list names HEC, ESSEC and INSEAD next to Microsoft, Meta and LVMH, among some 40 programs.

Most of these programs work on AI, health, climate or consumer products. One of them has a finance focus, the program of BNP Paribas.

BNP Paribas brought its fintech and insurtech accelerator with Plug and Play to Station F when the campus opened. The first class started in April 2017, and Crowdfund Insider reported the second batch moving into Station F that year. BNP Paribas also became the reference bank for the startups on the campus.

The program still appears in Station F's list as the BNP Paribas and Plug and Play B ! Up program for early-stage and mature fintech and insurtech startups. Plug and Play says the program reached one of the highest proof-of-concept-to-production rates in the finance sector in its first five years. The model is a bank that scouts startups through an outside partner and tests them in pilots.

A fintech that starts at Station F is supervised by the ACPR for banking and payments and by the AMF for markets and crypto-asset services. France regulated crypto service providers before MiCA, and the Banque de France ran wholesale central bank digital currency experiments on distributed ledgers, as described at fintech in Paris. A French authorization under MiCA or PSD2 passports into Germany.

Paris also has the conferences. Paris Blockchain Week, now Signal Week, covers digital assets, and Finance Loop held an AI in Finance meetup in Paris on AI in wealth management and investment.

Station F is a startup campus in Paris, opened in 2017 in the Halle Freyssinet and backed by Xavier Niel. Station F houses more than 30 programs run by Station F, companies and schools, with more than 1,000 startups on site. The programs decide who gets a desk.

Yes. BNP Paribas runs its fintech and insurtech program with Plug and Play at Station F, for early-stage and mature startups. Fintech founders also join the general programs, such as Founders and F/ai, which have no finance focus.

You apply to a program, and each program sets its own criteria and dates. Founders and Fighters are Station F's own programs; the corporate and school programs select through their owners. Visits require a separate request to Station F.