Liquid Network GmbH is a Swiss fintech startup located in Brugg. Its budgeting app already works well at home, but growth is capped: Swiss banks aren't required to share account data with third parties, so every data connection must be negotiated individually. Liquid is now shifting from selling directly to consumers toward a model where banks offer the app to their own customers, and Germany looks like the next step - a market roughly ten times Switzerland's size, where EU laws under PSD2 force banks to open their data. What's missing is real knowledge of German customers and banks.

The thesis combines a literature review with two rounds of primary research. Three industry experts were interviewed by video call: a German fintech journalist and startup investor, a Swiss open-banking platform manager, and a deputy regional manager at a Swiss regional bank - none of them work at a German bank, so their view on German banks' internal decisions is necessarily indirect. Alongside this, 72 German Gen Z consumers were surveyed on their finance habits. Everything is then run through PESTEL, Porter's Five Forces and a closing SWOT.

Germany looks attractive, and both parts of the research point the same way. Just 24% of the German Gen Z sample already use a budgeting app, while another 42% say they'd like to but haven't started - a supply gap, not a demand gap. Banks are the real lever: 64% trust their own bank most as a finance-app provider, comfort with sharing financial data rises from 17% for an unknown app to 74% once a bank offers it, and a bank's recommendation is the strongest trust driver, named by 69%. The interviews add context. One expert says a fintech needs a visible user base before it has real negotiating power with a bank; another notes that banks' own innovation labs are shrinking, narrowing the partnership window but making banks more willing to buy in expertise. Still, Germany lacks a shared trust network like Switzerland's SIX bLink, so every bank relationship must be built separately, and gamification - central to Liquid's current pitch - ranked last of eleven features tested. The thesis calls Germany attractive but conditional, recommending a phased entry through pilot banks over a direct-to-consumer push, with cybersecurity trust as a day-one priority.