Summer is full of excitement. And the upcoming Unchain Fintech Festival will contribute to it with its physical event in Oradea, a Romanian city at the very heart of the CEE region, on 13-14 July 2022.
What do we need to know about Unchain?
The Unchain Festival will bring together global fintech and blockchain experts in the heart of Central and Eastern Europe to explore the region’s potential and open up new opportunities for collaboration. Startup founders, bankers, and financial institutions, along with other key stakeholders in the ecosystem, will discuss the latest ideas and trends across payments, loans, insurance, personal finance, e-commerce, and banking.
The festival will be preceded by a series of 3 online pre-events, called The Demo Nights.. Тwo finalists will be chosen during each pitching event. The Demo Nights will serve as a platform for industry professionals to offer valuable advice to participating startups during the program’s Fireside Chat sessions.
Fintech trends and connections
The Unchain Festival will be split into three different sections:
- Unchain Trends, where conferences and workshops on some of the hottest digitalization topics in the field (Digital Journeys, DeFi & Open Banking, Regulations & CBDCs, and New Business Models – Payments and Digital Assets) will be held. Keynote speakers, regulators, and opinion leaders will also be present.
- Unchain Ideas, with a pitching stage and booth area for the top fintech startups in the region.
- Unchain Connections, the networking area where the different stakeholders can engage in 1-to-1 meetings.
The Unchain Festival organizers believe that bringing together representatives from established institutions, corporate giants, and innovative startups will benefit the region’s overall growth and innovation.
“We firmly believe that the regional unicorns we have so far have only just tapped into the big potential of the CEE. And, through Unchain Fintech Festival, we aim to grow not just the knowledge and networking of fintech representatives, but also help foster and facilitate the actual innovation and fintech growth of the CEE region,” Cosmin Cosma, Advisory Board Chairman of Unchain Fintech Festival shared in the press release.
First finalists of the Demo Nights Event – Acounto App and Insurwiz
Fintech and blockchain startups from Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia, met on April 6th, 2022 for the initial Demo Nights event. Cosmin Cosma, Unchain Festival’s Advisory Board Chairman and CEO of Finqware, hosted the event. Acounto App, an automated accounting consulting app, and Insurwiz, a tailor-made insurance solution platform, were the two startup finalists.
This gives them the opportunity to propose their ideas to investors on the pitching stage at the upcoming Unchain Festival, alongside the finalists from the following Demo Nights, and other selected startups.
“Thanks to the support of regional financial institutions, national banks, regulators, technology companies, industry associations, startup accelerators, ecosystem players, and trusted advisors, the upcoming flagship regional event will be the top growth accelerator of fintech and blockchain innovations in the CEE”, said Cosmin Cosma, Advisory Board Chairman of Unchain Fintech Festival and CEO of Finqware.
Second finalists of the Demo Nights event – Trality and ThreatMark
The Second Demo Nights event took place on 4th of May and fintech and blockchain startups from Austria, Czeck Republic, and Slovakia came together to display their pitches. Trality, an Austria-based algorithmic trading platform, won the best startup award, whereas ThreadMark, the Czeck fraud prevention platform built on behavior intelligence for trusted and safe online banking, won the best pitch.
What’s next?
The upcoming live Demo Nights event will take place in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Ukraine, on June 8th.
All CEE fintech and blockchain startups can submit their ideas to a committee of field experts through this form.
