About Payment & Banking

Payment & Banking

Payment & Banking is one of the leading independent media for the finance and fintech industry in the German-speaking world, published from Berlin at paymentandbanking.com. Reporting, analysing and commenting on the topics that really move the industry — payment, banking, fintech, digital assets and AI in finance — it has established itself over 15-plus years as a fixture of the German-speaking payment and banking scene: 600,000-plus page views a year, 350,000-plus podcast plays, the comdirect finanzblog Award as one of Germany's best finance blogs, the host of the Payment Exchange, Banking Exchange and KI Exchange lead events and the awarder of the "Fintech des Jahres" prize. The team consists of founders, investors, consultants and editors who are themselves part of the industry — no outside perspective, no journalism from the sidelines.

Overview

Payment & Banking is a German-language digital specialist medium for payment, banking and fintech, published from Berlin. The programme: the reporting, analysis and commentary on payment, banking, fintech, digital assets and AI in finance — the topics that move the German financial industry. The team's composition is the editorial programme: founders, investors, consultants and editors who know the actors, the connections and the mechanisms they write about — the industry journalism from the inside. The motto: plain text instead of PR language, opinion instead of mainstream — a space for real dialogue, critical classification and the ideas that advance the industry, actively contributing to the opinion and media diversity in the German banking industry. The formats: the online magazine with the daily articles, the podcasts, the lead events, the awards. The reach: 600,000-plus page views annually, 350,000-plus podcast plays across the shows. The founders: Maik Klotz and Jochen Siegert.

History

Payment & Banking's 15-plus years of independent reporting span the German fintech's entire history: from the early payment innovators through the fintech boom of the 2010s to the digital assets and the AI in finance of the 2020s. The founders: Maik Klotz — strategy consultant, author, speaker and podcaster with 15-plus years in the finance and payment industry, responsible at the DSGV for the digital-wallet strategy, host of "AI in Finance," LinkedIn Top Voice Finance, author of "Zahlungschaos und Payment Eskapaden" — and Jochen Siegert — co-founder, senior advisor and consultant, 25-plus years of experience introducing and managing innovations and digital financial products, leadership and CxO roles at global payment providers, fintechs and banks. The "Fintech des Jahres" award — the nominees like Finiata (2017) presenting their business models, KPIs and milestones to the readers and the jury — made the medium the industry's prize-giver. The award's format — the nominees' self-presentations, the readers' vote, the jury's decision — is the industry's beauty contest with substance: the KPIs disclosed, the milestones named, the investors listed. The lead events — the Payment Exchange, the Banking Exchange, the KI Exchange — made it the industry's host: the closed-door exchanges where the decision-makers discuss under Chatham House rules, the pioneers learning and going new ways. The comdirect finanzblog Award honoured it as one of Germany's best finance blogs. The lead events — the Payment Exchange, the Banking Exchange, the KI Exchange — made it the industry's host. The "Gesichter der FinTech Branche" interview series — the portraits from Heinz-Roger Dohms (Financial Times Deutschland, Finanz-Szene) to Jens Jennissen (fairr.de) — documented the industry's people.

Coverage and Content

The medium's programme is the German financial industry's digital transformation. The payment coverage: the payment methods, the wallets, the mobile payment, the banking apps — Maik Klotz's DSGV wallet strategy as the insider's beat. The wallet strategy — the German savings banks' digital wallets — is the payment industry's infrastructure question: who owns the customer's payment, the bank or the Big Tech. The mobile payment's German story — the slow adoption, the Girocard's defence, the Apple Pay's arrival — is the medium's home beat. The banking apps — the neobanks' rise, the incumbents' digitalisation — are the banking coverage's core. The banking coverage: the banks' numbers questioned — "Sind die Deutsche-Bank-Zahlen wirklich so sensationell gut?" — the Corona-and-banks story rewritten, the credit defaults and the securities maturities examined. The critical banking analysis — Christian Kirchner's Finanz-Szene style, the numbers interrogated — is the medium's journalistic signature: not the press release rewritten but the balance sheet read. The fintech coverage: the startups' business models, the founders, the investors — the "Fintech des Jahres" nominees' pitches. The digital assets: the blockchain beyond the hype — the Bitbond interviews, the "what comes after the hype" debates. The AI in finance: the "AI in Finance" podcast — the artificial intelligence's banking applications. The people: the "Gesichter der Branche" portraits — the industry's faces in the long interview. The events: the Payment Exchange, Banking Exchange and KI Exchange — the lead events where the pioneers discuss, learn and go new ways. The journalism's stance: Klartext — the critical classification, the opinion, the dialogue — the platform where the industry's pioneers meet.

The banking landscape the medium covers is Germany's three-pillar system: the private commercial banks, the public-sector Sparkassen organized in the DSGV savings-banks group, and the cooperative banks of the BVR group — a structure that shapes every debate the medium follows, from the digital-wallet strategies to the consolidation of the banking market. The fintech wave of the 2010s added a fourth actor to this landscape, the startups and neobanks whose business models, investors, and KPIs fill the medium's coverage. The plain-text stance — Klartext statt PR-Sprache — is the medium's answer to an industry where press releases are plentiful and independent classification is scarce.

Organization and Ownership

Payment & Banking is run by its founders — Maik Klotz (founder; strategy consultant, author, speaker, podcaster; DSGV digital-wallet strategy; "AI in Finance" host; LinkedIn Top Voice Finance) and Jochen Siegert (co-founder; senior advisor/consultant; 25-plus years in payment innovation) — with a team of founders, investors, consultants and editors from the industry. The commercial model is the independent B2B fintech medium's: the event business — the Payment Exchange, Banking Exchange and KI Exchange lead events — the awards, the sponsorships, the partnerships, and the content marketing for the financial industry. The independence is the brand: "Deutschlands unabhängige Stimme für Fintech, Payment & Banking" — the independent voice, no outside perspective, no sideline journalism. The 600,000-plus annual page views and the 350,000-plus podcast plays are the audience currency. The comdirect finanzblog Award is the external validation. Detailed company-registration information is not publicly confirmed in the sources available.

Digital Presence

The medium's home is paymentandbanking.com — the online magazine with the daily articles, the "Über uns" self-portrait, the podcast archive, the event pages. The podcasts — the FinTech Podcast (100-plus episodes: the blockchain debates, the industry news) and "AI in Finance" — carry the 350,000-plus plays. The social channels — Maik Klotz's LinkedIn Top Voice Finance presence with 9,000-plus followers — extend the medium into the professional networks. The events — Payment Exchange, Banking Exchange, KI Exchange — are the physical community: the lead events for the payment, banking and AI scenes. The "Fintech des Jahres" award is the annual industry ritual. In the German fintech-media landscape Payment & Banking occupies the independent-insider pole: alongside the established financial press and the newer fintech blogs, the Berlin medium is the industry's own voice — 15-plus years, 600,000-plus page views, the exchanges and the award, plain text instead of PR — for the payment, banking and fintech scene that it reports from the inside. The insider model — the founders, investors, consultants and editors writing about their own industry — is the medium's strength and its tightrope: the access and the understanding against the distance. The "kein Journalismus von der Seitenlinie" — no journalism from the sidelines — is the promise: the writers who know the actors personally, the mechanisms from their own work, the connections from the inside. The 15-plus years prove the model: the independent voice that the German payment and banking scene reads, discusses and meets — at the exchanges, in the podcasts, on the site.