From Participant to Partner: Nect Joins our Community

Pictured: Philip Viertel and Cedric Boy Beeg.

Sometimes, you know a product before you know the company behind it.

That was the case for TechQuartier’s Philip Viertel.

At the beginning of this year, Philip was setting up his tax return through ELSTER and needed to verify his identity. He completed the process using Nect without really knowing who Nect was at the time.

The identification was quick, the process worked, and the Nect app stayed on his phone.

A few months later, the connection resurfaced when our partnership team met Nect at FIBE in Berlin and again at the Handelsblatt Zukunft Retail Banking event, where the startup was invited to apply for our TQ Accelerator: Digital Finance.

Now, we’re excited to welcome Hamburg-based FinTech Nect as a new TechQuartier partner.

“Following a productive collaboration with TechQuartier throughout 2026, during which we observed significant synergies and emerging opportunities, we have chosen to strengthen this partnership,” said Cedric Boy Beeg, Senior Sales Consultant – Banking & Financial Services at Nect.

Digital trust without the friction

Nect develops AI-powered solutions for digital identity verification, electronic signatures reusable digital identities or verified interaction between companies and users.

Its technology is already being used across sectors including financial services, insurance, healthcare, telecommunications and e-government and often solving a challenge that sounds simple but is difficult to get right: How do you make a digital process secure enough to build trust, while keeping it simple enough that people actually want to use it?

For financial institutions, insurers and FinTechs in particular, that challenge is becoming increasingly important.

Customer onboarding sits at the intersection of regulation, technology and customer experience. A process needs to satisfy compliance requirements, but every additional click, interruption or manual step can also create friction for the customer.

That balance is one of the reasons Nect is such a strong fit for the TechQuartier community.

“When we first met Nect at FIBE, I was impressed by their AI-powered identity verification technology and their ambitions around secure digital identity made in Germany. Our corporate partners are naturally interested in what they are building, while our startup community can benefit enormously from their experience. Nect brings valuable knowledge about how companies can turn digital trust into better customer experiences and stronger business relationships,” said Philip Viertel, TechQuartier’s Innovation Lead Finance.

Why Nect and TechQuartier?

Through the TQ Accelerator: Digital Finance and exchanges across the ecosystem, we have seen how closely Nect’s experience connects with the questions our community is tackling.

For startups, that includes challenges such as designing smoother onboarding journeys, navigating regulated markets, integrating identity solutions and learning how to work successfully with large organizations.

For established financial institutions and insurers, the opportunity is equally relevant. Changes around digital identity, AML requirements and eIDAS are creating new possibilities for rethinking processes that have traditionally been slow, fragmented or difficult for customers.

Nect brings almost a decade of experience in solving exactly these kinds of problems.

“Financial institutions, FinTechs and insurers have a great deal of potential to capitalize on innovations driven by the new AML and eIDAS regulations. For nearly a decade, Nect has demonstrated that automated customer onboarding can be secure, cost-effective and highly successful. We have developed a seamless, user-centric experience that financial institutions and other entities can now finally leverage,” said Cedric Boy Beeg.

Experience that can travel across industries

Another reason we see so much potential in this partnership is that Nect’s experience goes beyond financial services. The company operates across insurance, healthcare, telecommunications and public-sector digitalization, giving it deep insights into how different highly regulated industries approach identity, trust and customer experience.

That cross-industry perspective can be particularly valuable within our ecosystem.

Nect also brings extensive experience working with large organizations, including companies and institutions such as Deutsche Telekom, R+V Versicherung, AOK Federal Association, Schleswig Holstein, BITMARCK and ELSTER.

For founders, this offers access to technical expertise as well as valuable learnings on enterprise needs, compliance, and long-term corporate partnerships. 

Connecting Hamburg and Frankfurt

There is also a broader ecosystem story behind the partnership.

Nect is rooted in Hamburg, while we are based in Frankfurt and the Rhein-Main region. Bringing those networks closer together creates opportunities for knowledge, technology and relationships to move between two of Germany’s important cities.

What comes next

For us, a partnership should be more than a logo on a website. We want to share the insights from our partner network so the wider community can truly benefit from them.

As part of the partnership, we look forward to bringing Nect’s expertise into conversations with founders, financial institutions, insurers and corporate innovators around topics including digital identity, customer onboarding, regulation and the future of trust services.

Philip first encountered Nect as a user, without really knowing the company behind the technology.

A year later, we’re very happy to know them much better.

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Interested in becoming a partner? Contact us.