Germany’s First Finance Sandbox: TechQuartier Welcomes Deutsche Bank as Partner

Pictured: Carina Sauerwein, Head of Innovation Products at TechQuartier, and William Powell, Business Functional Analyst in Deutsche Bank’s API Program.

The new Tech & Data Lab Frankfurt, Germany’s first financial-sector-focused sandbox, provides financial institutions and startups with a secure digital environment to test new technologies and reduce implementation risks. 

Frankfurt am Main, September 9, 2026 — TechQuartier announced Deutsche Bank as the first industry partners of the Tech & Data Lab Frankfurt. The platform enables financial companies, such as Deutsche Bank, to work with selected later-stage startups to test specific use cases and real-world challenges. The result helps reduce uncertainty before solutions move into the scaling phase and speeds up the innovation process.

TechQuartier launched the Tech & Data Lab Frankfurt in March 2026 to make it easier for banks and other financial institutions to test artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other emerging technologies on a secure and sovereign platform. Until now, the market has lacked a realistic testing environment where new ideas could be explored without exposing sensitive data, navigating complex infrastructure and regulatory requirements, or making substantial upfront investments.

The platform replicates real-world market conditions in a secure testing environment using synthetic datasets and without exposing real customer data or production systems. This allows financial institutions and later-stage startups to jointly develop and test new ideas under realistic conditions. The aim is to generate insights early in the process and to enable companies to make informed decisions to pursue, adapt or reject an idea.

Deutsche Bank’s Open Finance Challenge

The first challenge with Deutsche Bank will explore how financial data can be used securely and with users’ consent in accordance with established Open Finance standards. The objective is to enable new digital financial services and to create seamless customer journeys. Key focus areas include trusted financial data for digital applications, improved discoverability of financial products, and their integration into AI-powered customer expereinces.The first challenge cycle is scheduled to begin this fall. 

Later-stage startups and technology partners are invited to apply for the Open Finance Challenge. TechQuartier will provide information on the application process, participation requirements, selection procedure and timeline online.

“During a recent Open Finance Roundtable, we worked together with TechQuartier and numerous industry partners to develop ideas and concepts. The Tech & Data Lab Frankfurt now allows us to test these concepts under realistic conditions without using established production systems or data. This enables us to turn conceptual ideas into robust prototypes used as a sound basis for deciding on the next steps,” says Joris Hensen, Initiator of the API Program and Open Finance Lead at Deutsche Bank.

A New Testing Model for Germany’s Financial Sector

“The financial industry does not lack ideas. The real challenge is identifying which ideas are genuinely ready for implementation,” says Alice Rettig, Managing Director of TechQuartier. “With the Tech & Data Lab Frankfurt, we want to create an environment where financial institutions can test new technologies under realistic conditions, learn quickly and make better-informed decisions before committing to implementation. Having Deutsche Bank as one of our first partners is an important step in putting this ambition into practice.”

The Tech & Data Lab Frankfurt is listed as a regulatory sandbox (“Reallabor”) for the financial sector on the German Federal Government’s Sandbox Innovation Portal (“Reallabore-Innovationsportal des Bundes”). 

Unlike a traditional innovation lab, the Tech & Data Lab Frankfurt is built around specific challenges from the financial sector and is designed in close collaboration with established FinTech startups.

“Many questions within a company may appear easy to answer at first glance. What really matters, however, is if our answers address the issues that customers, investors and other market players actually care about. The ability to test assumptions in a secure environment using large synthetic datasets creates real value in understanding when assumptions are validated and when unexpected findings open up entirely new perspectives,” says William Powell, Business Functional Analyst in Deutsche Bank’s API Program.

Frankfurt Is the Right Location

The choice of location is no coincidence. Frankfurt is one of Europe’s leading financial centres and is home to a high concentration of banks, financial infrastructure providers, regulators, technology companies and research institutions.

The Tech & Data Lab Frankfurt builds on ten years of experience that TechQuartier has gained in the areas of finance, technology and entrepreneurship. Founded in 2016, TechQuartier has since developed into a platform connecting financial institutions, startups, technology companies, policymakers and other stakeholders across the financial ecosystem. It is also Germany’s officially designated FinTech Hub as part of the nationwide de:hub initiative.

The Tech & Data Lab Frankfurt combines this ecosystem and innovation expertise with technical infrastructure developed jointly with NayaOne, NVIDIA, the Sovereign AI Factory FrankfurtRheinMain and Polarise.

TechQuartier is currently working with partners on the first challenges for the Tech & Data Lab Frankfurt and will announce additional participating organizations and use cases as the initiative progresses.