UNCHAIN Festival: CEE’s Fintech Frontier Comes to Life in Oradea

A place that might not be immediately on your radar: Oradea, a medium-sized city in western Romania, just a few kilometers from the Hungarian border. Historically steeped, architecturally fascinating—and since 2022, hosting one of Europe’s most unusual FinTech formats: the UNCHAIN Festival.

WWhat is still considered an insider tip in many conference calendars has long been a fixture in the CEE region. The UNCHAIN Festival is not a traditional FinTech trade fair. It is a festival, dialogue platform, and networking space all in one – deliberately informal, with participants from very different areas of the financial and technology world. The venue: the restored fortress of Oradea. Open air with a stage, lounges, food trucks, and panels.

More than a trade fair: UNCHAIN as a stage for CEE

Since its launch in 2022, UNCHAIN has brought together banks, FinTechs, regulators, and infrastructure players from across Central and Eastern Europe. The goal is to engage in genuine conversations, initiate new collaborations, and understand and connect regional financial markets. All this in an environment that’s more like a summer festival than a board meeting—with a deep technical agenda but in a deliberately relaxed setting.

The central idea of UNCHAIN: think of CEE as a region, not as individual markets. Anyone who wants to understand or help shape the digital finance sector in Eastern Europe will find an unusual but highly relevant platform in Oradea.

The UNCHAIN Festival in Oradea brings together financial technology players from Central and Eastern Europe. The event provides a platform for over 60 sessions focused on instant payments and interoperability to drive digital transformation.

The focus of UNCHAIN was on:

Instant payments have long been standard in many countries in the region. Now it’s all about reach, interoperability, and concrete business models.

Artificial intelligence – not as a buzzword, but as an infrastructure topic: Where can AI improve processes, support decisions, and personalize services?

Embedded finance and lending – particularly relevant in retail, SME financing and platform structures.

Digital Identities & EUDI – with concrete use cases from banks, InsurTechs and the public sector.

Cloud and core modernization – from AWS migration of large institutions to new tech stacks at neobanks.

The discussions were in-depth, the interaction open and collegial. In many places, one had the impression that many people knew each other, worked together, and kept in touch. There was little self-promotion, and much conversation took place on equal terms. Also striking was the open discussion about projects, regulatory details, and technical realities.

In many CEE markets, technologies such as instant payments, digital identities, and embedded finance are not the future, but the present. Solutions exist, systems are running, and collaborations are emerging. What has often been missing so far is an international perspective.

Central banks on stage – and in conversation at UNCHAIN

The central banks of the regions were notably well represented. In several sessions, representatives from the central banks of Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic discussed their role as active designers of payment infrastructure, regulation, and market liberalization. Together with industry associations, FinTechs, and infrastructure partners, they discussed what a regulatory framework could look like that supports innovation rather than hampering it.

The discussions focused on specific topics: instant payments, digital identities, the impact of the MiCA regulation – and the question of how cooperation between regulators and market players can work on an equal footing. UNCHAIN offered a framework for this that rarely arises: open, direct, and solution-oriented.

At the UNCHAIN Festival, experts, including Cristina Reichmann from CMS Cameron McKenna and representatives from national banks, will discuss the role of central banks in the future of payments and innovation.

Startups in Focus at UNCHAIN – Integrated in two days

The startup competition was not a pure pitch format, but part of the program: curated, focused on the region, with a jury of investors, banks, and tech partners.

The award went to Mifundo , a FinTech that addresses a real problem: lending to people who have lived or worked in multiple EU countries. The solution: a platform that pools data from various European credit agencies, thus enabling cross-border credit checks.

The pitch was convincing – not only technically, but also in terms of inclusion, scalability, and market potential. The jury quickly agreed, and the audience felt it, too: This struck a chord. Other finalists presented solutions in areas such as lending, identity verification, and embedded infrastructure – without buzz, but with substance.

Sirius AI particularly stood out with an ambitious concept: an “Agentic Bank” – conceived as a financial operating system for AI agents. The starting point is clear: Today, autonomous systems lack direct access to financial infrastructure. Transactions remain complex, expensive, and, above all, not real-time.

Sirius aims to change precisely that. The stack presented combines identity and compliance functionalities (“Know Your Agent”) with multi-asset wallets, a rule-based policy engine (e.g., for spending limits, escrow logic, or emergency shutdowns), as well as real-time accounting and integration with existing systems. The goal is to empower agents to act independently, controllably, and securely – including in the financial space.

The vision: a transaction-capable AI ecosystem that isn’t reduced to the logic of human interaction, but has its own interfaces and rules. This becomes particularly relevant as soon as AI-supported systems are embedded in real business processes – for example, in the supply chain, accounting, or treasury. Sirius’s platform is aimed at precisely this future – pragmatic, controllable, and with clear governance.

A speaker presents the concept of Sirius Agentic Bank, a financial platform for AI agents, during the UNCHAIN Festival in Oradea. A presentation illustrating the innovative direction of the fintech sector can be seen in the background.

UNCHAIN Tech Infrastructure: CEE thinks more agilely than CE

While modernization is still being discussed in many Western European markets, it is already a reality in some places in CEE. The digital and infrastructure sessions in Oradea demonstrated how consistently some institutions are embracing cloud, open architecture, and AI-based services.

Raiffeisen Bank, for example, reported on its cloud migration with AWS, while Banca Transilvania demonstrated how to rethink mobile banking with BT GO and Finshape – and was named “Digital Bank of the Year” for its efforts. Garanti BBVA also set a precedent with its virtual assistant “GIA.”

These examples made it clear: Digital transformation here means not just the front end, but also the core architecture – and is often happening faster than expected. This is also due to the fact that many banks in CEE are structurally younger – and don’t have to overcome entire IT generations first.

Data, identity, security: the critical building blocks

Another focus: identity, EUDI wallets, and data governance. Panels with IBM, IT Smart Systems, Namirial, and regulators discussed concrete implementation projects – for example, in the digital onboarding process or in AI-driven services. It became clear that the technical foundation alone is not enough – trust, traceability, and a clean data stack are key prerequisites.

Also exciting: the role of providers like FORT and Symphopay in securing networked systems – and the perspective on EUDI as a bridge between infrastructure, identity, and trust. What remains is the realization: The pressure to innovate is high – but things are being built, not just talked about.

Real platform economy: retail, agriculture, mobility

The “Fintersections” track focused on one of the most exciting developments: the connection of traditional industries with integrated financial infrastructure. Retailers like eMAG and Auchan, fleet players like Eurowag and Autonom, and agricultural financiers like Agricover demonstrated how embedded finance works in practice. It became clear: integrating payments, loans, or insurance directly into the process creates added value, but also opens the door to new business models.

Particularly impressive: Agricover. The company has found a unique way to provide farms not just with financing, but with an entire embedded finance stack. Loans, hedges, payments – all integrated into the farmer’s operational platform. Automated processes and coordinated products along the agricultural performance.

This approach was surprising to many in the audience at UNCHAIN – not because it was so technically complex, but because it is rarely considered in depth. Embedded finance in the agricultural sector has so far been a marginal topic, but here it has become a core element of an ecosystem. Agricover uses financial infrastructure not as an add-on, but as a foundation to combine liquidity, planning security, and operational efficiency. A model that deserves attention far beyond the CEE region.

Ethos instead of etiquette

A central theme that ran through many discussions at UNCHAIN was “The New Ethos in Banking.” Rik Coeckelbergs – founder of The Banking Scene and author of the book of the same name – not only moderated the discussion, but also presented the topic credibly and profoundly.

His central argument: If banks want to remain relevant, they must be more than technological platforms – they need attitude, trust, transparency, and accountability. Not as a communication cliché, but as a lived practice.

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(Featured image by Theo Lonic via Unsplash)

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First published in IT Finanzmagazin. A third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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