Banking Exchange: banking and payments in the city where the euro rails run
Banking Exchange, short BEX, is the banking conference of Payment & Banking, and it meets in Frankfurt am Main. The organizer describes it on banking-exchange.de as the annual class reunion of the German banking and fintech industry since 2017, a boutique event with an edutainment approach. The next edition takes place on November 4, 2026 at Massif Central in Frankfurt am Main, as the organizer's own site states it.
The 2026 edition runs under the title "Underground" with the three ground themes Cash, Code and Crime. Payment & Banking explains the label as a promise to negotiate the subjects that work below the polished surface of the industry, which in a Frankfurt room means the things a bank cannot say at its own capital markets day.
What the program covers
Four topic complexes carry the 2026 program, and each one is phrased as a question. Money in motion asks what counts as money and who controls it, with stablecoins, the digital euro, tokenization and new B2B infrastructure, and the observation that the card is losing weight while the token gains it. Trust under pressure takes identity, fraud and money laundering, with deepfakes and synthetic identities meeting a supervisory system that is being rebuilt with the AMLA in Frankfurt.
Who owns the customer asks what happens when AI models, chips and platforms become the new intelligence layer of banking, and who ends up as the pure backend. The industry is changing takes the foreign neobanks moving into German business, the business models and the consolidation. The subjects themselves sit on the Finance Loop pages for the digital euro in Germany, stablecoin payments and fraud prevention in Germany.
What separates it from Payment Exchange Berlin
The two Exchanges split the field by question and by city. Payment Exchange in Berlin opens the year in late winter with the payment process itself: the rail, the message, the checkout, the fee. Banking Exchange closes the year in November with the institution: the balance sheet, the core system, the license, the brand, the supervisor.
Berlin brings the product and startup crowd, Frankfurt brings the banks and the supervisory lawyers, which the pages payments in Berlin and payments in Frankfurt set out. A speaker often appears at both, and the Berlin agenda shows up in the Frankfurt program nine months later with a bank's implementation experience attached.
Why Frankfurt
Frankfurt holds the institutions that decide what a German bank may do. The ECB sets the monetary policy and supervises the large banks, the Bundesbank operates the payment infrastructure, and the Anti-Money Laundering Authority took its seat in the city. Finance in Frankfurt and digital banking in Frankfurt describe that concentration.
Frankfurt carries a second conference season around it. Frankfurt Digital Finance covers the digital finance agenda at the start of the year, and Finance Loop runs its own Frankfurt formats on payments, instant transfers and the digital euro through the year. The dates sit in the event calendar.
When is Banking Exchange 2026?
Banking Exchange 2026 takes place on November 4, 2026 at Massif Central in Frankfurt am Main, as banking-exchange.de states it. The event runs for one conference day with networking and an afterparty, and the organizer publishes the program, the speakers and the tickets on that site.
Who organizes Banking Exchange?
Payment & Banking organizes Banking Exchange, as the conference site says in its own footer. Payment & Banking is the German media company for fintech, payments and digital banking, published by PBA Experts GmbH in Munich. The same group runs Payment Exchange in Berlin, KI Exchange and the Fintech des Jahres award.
Banking Exchange and Finance Loop
Finance Loop has members in the Frankfurt room at Banking Exchange, on stage and in the audience. Finance Loop is the meeting place for payments and digital banking in Frankfurt for the rest of the year, with meetups and conferences on instant transfers, card payments, the digital euro and tokenization. Finance Loop keeps those dates in its event calendar.
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, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.