The Hungarian FinTech market is undergoing a silent but powerful transformation. Long gone are the days when Budapest was overlooked by Czech tech companies heading west or north. Today, Hungary stands out as a top-tier FinTech hub in Central Europe, driven by world-class infrastructure—such as the qvik instant payment system enabling transfers within 5 seconds—and an increasingly open regulatory and venture capital environment.

To bridge these two dynamic markets, a specialized Czech business delegation organized by CzechTrade traveled to Budapest on June 10–11, 2026. The goal was clear: connect innovative Czech FinTech minds with Hungarian banks, investors, and ecosystem leaders to unlock new regional growth.

A Day of Insight, Strategy, and Networking

The main event kicked off with a packed room of international guests and an atmosphere full of optimism. After a warm welcome note highlighting the incredible turnout, the stage was handed over to a high-profile panel discussion. Industry experts deep-dived into market synergies, e-commerce potential, and white spaces in SME banking and consumer lending across the V4 region.

Following a short networking break, the program continued with a comprehensive presentation by CzechInvest, mapping out strategic support tools, soft-landing programs, and cross-border innovation opportunities.

Before diving into the core interactive part of the day, all attendees gathered on the stairs for a memorable "family photo," symbolizing the unity and friendly spirit of the newly reinforced Hungarian-Czech partnership. The afternoon then shifted into high gear with dynamic roundtable discussions. Participants split into three tailored streams allowing for direct, unfiltered B2B matchmaking, experience sharing, and concrete partnership scouting.

Beyond the Roundtables: Evenings Packed with Networking

The delegation’s impact extended far beyond the business lounges. As part of the two-day agenda, the Czech companies fully immersed themselves in the local community by attending two premier ecosystem events: Budapest FinTech Summer Talks and Equity Thursday. These evening gatherings provided the perfect, informal backdrop for our delegation to chat with local founders, investors, and tech enthusiasts, cementing personal connections that will undoubtedly pave the way for future cross-border deals.

Showcasing Czech Innovation: The Participating Companies

The delegation brought a diverse mix of Czech FinTech excellence to Budapest, ranging from established market leaders to agile infrastructure enablers:

• Citfin has been helping companies and entrepreneurs save on foreign exchange transactions and keep their international payments under control since 1996. Citfin offers competitive exchange rates, instant payments, a multi-currency account supporting 26 currencies, and a personal approach.
• Comgate is a licensed payment institution regulated by the Czech National Bank, serving over 20,000 merchants across Czechia and Slovakia. As a principal member of Visa and Mastercard, Comgate provides both in-store POS and e-commerce gateway solutions from a single merchant-facing platform. Registered to operate across select EU member states, Comgate combines the reliability of an established financial institution with the agility of a technology-first payments provider.
• CORNERSTONE Investment Services (Edward) is a B2B wealth management platform solving the core dilemma of legacy banks: how to offer the modern, low-cost investment products that today's clients actually demand, without sacrificing your high profit margins. Upgrade your infrastructure now.
• Finbricks is an established Czech open banking and A2A payments provider for payment providers, banks, PSPs, ERP platforms and merchants. Proven at scale in Czechia & Slovakia, it enables AIS, PIS and account-to-account payment use cases and is now scaling across CEE.
• Five Crafts helps banks and VC portfolio companies to deliver new products and services from idea to live operations. Our team unites expert crafts — Payments and transaction systems, IT Security, Risk & Compliance, Finance management — so clients get one-stop-shop, fully flexible expertise without necessity for permanent hires.
• Lightning Everywhere is a platform supporting Lightning Network (LN) – Bitcoin Layer 2 adoption for everyday payments. Currently operates a web application for finding your closest merchants (and e-shops) accepting LN. It is pre-product market fit in terms of future direction.
• Pay-Fair is a SaaS HR software that helps companies set competitive and fair salaries, avoid overpaying or losing employees, and plan compensation budgets using real market data and software an therefore save a lot on salary budgets. We also help businesses prepare for new EU Pay Transparency regulations faster and at lower cost.
• Symfio is a Czech cloud platform for consolidation, management reporting, budgeting and cash flow planning. It connects directly to accounting and ERP systems, helping multi-entity companies replace Excel chaos with one real-time source of financial truth.
• TokenWay runs DLTBridge: one integration that connects banks and financial institutions to every regulated digital-securities venue in Europe. Municipalities and large companies can also issue bonds directly through our widget, fast, low-cost, instant T+0 settlement.

Looking Ahead: The Future is Shared

The energy in Budapest clearly showed that the Hungarian and Czech FinTech ecosystems are a natural fit. With the Hungarian National Bank (MNB) actively acting as an ally through its Regulatory Sandbox and the Hungarian Fintech Association (HFA) opening doors to over 70 local members, the path for Czech expansion has never been clearer.

This event was not just a one-time meeting; it was the foundation for long-term regional cooperation. The doors between Prague and Budapest are now wide open, and we are already looking forward to next steps, joint projects, and the next chapters of this thriving cross-border partnership. 

Prepared by the team of the CzechTrade Hungary foreign office.