Business playground. The general awareness of Vilnius is growing in all areas. This includes tourism, meeting industry and business. Vilnius is levelling from a „best-kept secret” category to categories like: „best city for a city-break“ (source: Post Office) or a „best city for expats to live“ (source: Lonely Planet). Vilnius is also getting more popular among tourists: in the first six months of 2019 the city has experienced more than 12 per cent growth in tourist numbers. Furthermore, the number of international events in Vilnius grew by 30 per cent in one year, putting Vilnius brightly on the map of meeting industry professionals.
In terms of business, large multinational corporations leading the Fortune 500 list choose Vilnius for their global business centers – healthcare industry giants McKesson and AmerisourceBergen are just the most recent examples. Vilnius frequently leads various prestigious business rankings as the most dynamic city. For example, Vilnius was elected the most dynamically developing city of service centres in the CEE region in the CEE shared service center awards.
It was also listed among top 10 fintech locations globally by fdi performance (Financial Times) and got an award for the best business climate in Emerging Europe Awards. Financial Times’ fDi Intelligence division announced the list of 30 cities that have attracted the most greenfield Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects of tech startups per capita during the years 2016-2018. Vilnius was ranked as the leading city and outranked cities like Singapore, Tel Aviv, Berlin and London, which came in second. According to fDi Intelligence, Vilnius has a clear strategy for attracting tech startups. Researchers estimate that the business-friendly regulatory environment of the city, its open data policy and successful integration of newcomers most contributed to the leadership of Vilnius in the ranking.
What distinguishes Vilnius – the second youngest capital in Europe – from other cities is the combination of a good market size, ambitious talent pool, a world-class business infrastructure and institutional support for tech startups.
There are many examples of companies that have started as startups in Vilnius and gained international success, for example Vinted, Trafi, Oberlo or Deeper. Many of successful Lithuanian startups acknowledge that Vilnius is their playground, where they test innovative ideas and then are able to export them to other markets.
What makes Vilnius a perfect playground for startups is that the city is is a city-sized sandbox: It’s a perfect place to develop and test new products due to city’s special sandbox programmes, friendly regulatory environment, useful tools like open data and a vast pool of local talent. Vilnius has five currently active sandbox programmes: three Fintech sandboxes, a PropTech and an energy sandbox, each offering possibilities for startups to test and create new products in live environment under some guidance. The city is especially successful in those sectors where innovation plays a key role, like fintech, lasers, life sciences, game development and ICT.
Vilnius is the largest Financial centre of the Baltic States. The Sandbox environment allows fintech companies to test their products in a real marketplace and has no regulatory sanctions for fintechs for the 1st year. The fintech licensing process is one of the Europe’s quickest (only three months to get an e-money or payments license). It is two to three times faster than other EU jurisdictions.
The largest fintech conference in Northern Europe and the Baltics
On 27-28 November 2019, European and global fintech companies, investors and everyone interested in the latest financial technology will turn their attention to Lithuania. Here the largest financial technology conference Fintech Inn in Northern Europe and the Baltic States will be held for the 4th year in a row in Vilnius. With over 60 speakers presenting the latest and hottest fintech trends, the event is expected to attract over 3000 participants representing more than 500 companies worldwide.
This year, the conference will focus on open banking, money laundering, cyber security, and the cutting-edge hardware and software solutions in fintech. A very impressive plethora of speakers from all over the world – from the USA and Canada to Germany, China and Brazil is expected at the event. This is a great opportunity not only to learn from the best, but also to discover new possibilities during two-day business meetings.
All conference guests are invited to attend B2B meetings which can be arranged on the special B2Match mobile app. The app will show all registered participants with whom you can chat via instant messaging and arrange B2B meetings.
Just like last year, fintech companies and their associations will have the opportunity to introduce themselves to the event attendees and present their services, as well as unique products being developed.
