Job Mantz has spent years on both sides of the fintech sales pitch. When I asked the Executive Director of the Holland Fintech Association why Amsterdam Fintech Event still feels relevant in its third year, he went straight back to his banking days: “I was kind of the honey and all the flies came to me because somebody had to sell me something.” That morning he had opened the programme with Visa. In our interview he spent twelve minutes explaining who gets a seat at the table, and why bunq and bol.com both belong there.
| What you need to know |
|---|
| 1Job Mantz is Executive Director of the Holland Fintech Association, which organises Amsterdam Fintech Event 2026 with Cognito at WTC Amsterdam on 7 and 8 October. He took the job a little over a month ago. |
| 2Mantz describes day one as being about stablecoins and digital assets, with Visa as the partner. He opened the programme at 09:30 in the Auditorium together with Pierre Castronovo, who leads fintech and stablecoin go-to-market at Visa. |
| 3The association counts licensed banks and fintechs as members, and also pure technology providers that hold no licence and so have no direct line to De Nederlandsche Bank or the AFM. |
| 4My read: his definition of a fintech is broad on purpose, and that breadth is the association's real product, because it gives the unlicensed half of the sector a voice in the room where the rules get made. |
The full conversation runs just over twelve minutes.
An event built against the sales floor
I sat down with Mantz in our studio corner at the World Trade Center, with the Auditorium already full at nine in the morning. My first question was simple: how does an event stay relevant once the novelty of year one has gone? His answer started with what he used to dislike about the circuit.
A lot of the events are all about sales and basically when I worked at a bank, when I went to those events, I was kind of the honey and all the flies came to me because somebody had to sell me something.
Job Mantz, Executive Director, Holland Fintech Association
Anyone who has worked a bank’s procurement side will recognise the picture. His fix is to programme the content first and let the audience follow it. On day one that content is stablecoins and digital assets, with Visa as the partner, and he was clear about who he wants to hear it.
Our target group are knowledge sharers in organization, but also senior managers, directors, founders, CEOs that actually are at the forefront of those topics and can move the needle basically in the next few months, years about those topics.
Job Mantz
He also pointed at a group I did not expect him to single out. “There are a lot of lawyers in the room as well,” he said, and they come to hear first how the discussion is moving. With stablecoins in the EU now running under MiCA, that makes sense: the people who draft the terms of a euro token want to hear the payment schemes and the banks think out loud before the paperwork starts. We covered that question in depth in our piece on the euro stablecoin.
Read the thread on X
So what actually counts as a fintech?
This was the part of the conversation I enjoyed most, because Mantz admitted it was one of the first questions he asked himself in the new job. Draw the line tightly around technology that serves banks, and some obvious names fall out.
You would say that bunq is not a fintech, which I certainly think that they would be insulted if they heard that they are not a fintech. So the broader definition would be whatever somebody thinks is a fintech would be a fintech. And I don’t like that as well.
Job Mantz
Too narrow loses bunq and bol.com. Too wide means anyone can claim the label. His working answer sits between the two.
A fintech is an enabler or a supporter of financial services to either another financial institution, banks or other fintechs, or to the public.
Job Mantz
He added the line I would put on the wall of any fintech marketing team: “Sometimes it’s the rails underneath the tech, but sometimes it’s in your face.” His examples for the second kind were bunq and Bitvavo, companies the consumer sees every day. The first kind is the processor, the compliance tool or the core banking vendor that nobody outside the industry can name.
The same logic explains why a retailer belongs at a fintech event. Mantz named bol.com: “In a sense they are a fintech.” bol now runs its own payment business, which we looked at in our article on embedded finance at bol. He mentioned Spotify in the same breath, which he called “not necessarily a financial institution” and still wants in the discussion.
A voice for the companies without a licence
The broad definition has a practical consequence, and it is the one I think matters most. Membership is open to banks and licensed institutions, and also to the pure tech providers that sit behind them. Those firms carry real weight in how Dutch finance works, yet they have no supervisory relationship of their own.
They are not talking to regulators because they’re not licensed, for instance. And then we can have their back when we’re talking to the National Bank or to the AFM, for instance.
Job Mantz
In the Netherlands supervision is split between De Nederlandsche Bank for prudential matters and the AFM for conduct. A software vendor that builds the onboarding flow for a licensed bank answers to neither directly, but every new rule lands on its roadmap. Mantz described the association’s job as gathering that knowledge and then speaking “as one voice to the regulators, to bigger banks.” For a small vendor without a public affairs team, that seat at the table is the main reason to join.
It also answers a question he says he hears often: why have a separate association when the Netherlands already has a banking association?
We represent not only banks, but companies that provide tech to banks, which makes a big distinction between the Dutch Banking Association and us for example.
Job Mantz
Five topics by Thursday evening
I closed by asking what he wants to take home from the two days. He gave a goal I can hold him to.
If you come back to me at the end of the two days, I want to have the five topics that are important for next year.
Job Mantz
So I will. I suggested a second conversation after the event to ask him for those five topics. He also wants proper sit-down time with members to ask what the association can do for them, which is a sensible first agenda for someone a month into the role. My guess is that stablecoin settlement and the compliance load on unlicensed vendors both make his list. I will report back on how close that guess comes.
Read next
- All our Amsterdam Fintech Event 2026 coverage, interviews added as they go live.
- Our preview with Bryan Verhage of Cognito on how the event is put together.
- Embedded finance at bol, the retailer Mantz counts as a fintech.
- The Holland Fintech Association: website, event page, programme and speakers and LinkedIn.
I recorded the interview with Job Mantz at the World Trade Center Amsterdam on 7 October 2026. Quotes are verbatim, with filler removed. Cryptofocus is a media partner of Amsterdam Fintech Event 2026. Nothing here is financial advice.
