Exploring solarisBank: German Fintech Wonder

solarisBank | Fintech

Over the last decade, we have witnessed an immense transformation in the banking sector. With the coming in of core banking solution, the banking community has witnessed immense transformation as it was followed by mobile banking that opened doors to anytime and anywhere banking for customers. With this unification in the banking sector there were several other transformations in the banking sector in the technological front, very recently came a platform, which many of us are completely unaware of, providing its users (which mostly includes the digital companies and financial sector startups), to develop banking services and to access various banking service modules, which they can later integrate into their own company processes or their websites or even their mobile applications. This platform is known as the solarisBank.

Introduction

This is a Berlin-based Tech company, co-founded by Finleap, a German fintech startup factory. Mr. Roland Folz, Mr. Marko Wenthin, and Mr.Andreas Bittner, as well as CTO Peter Grosskopf lead this company. This company was founded in March 2016, after receiving a banking license from the German regulator and is backed by many renowned international investors. It has been able to successfully raise a total of more than 95 million euro over the past two years. It offers both, the technology and the banking support needed to offer various banking and financial products along with the required regulatory mandate.

About the Company

SolarisBank is a banking platform emboldening finance innovators. This platform targets to offer custom-made solutions to their clients to aid their unique financial needs. It helps to provide its users with a banking platform so that they can effortlessly integrate the anticipated financial services into their own processes. It empowers its users to develop their own tailored, modern, personalized and scalable banking product. It works on a business-to-business-to-consumer model (B2B2C) wherein it offers services related to debit cards, online loan, payment services and account and transaction services for its users.

The company is able to passport it’s banking license to other EEA (European Economic Area) countries and hence is able to serve business partners in nearly any European country. Very recently the company is planning to expand its operations in Asia and has currently raised €26.3 million (£22.9 million) for this purpose. The investors in this fintech startup include giants like Japanese internet investment company SBI Group, Yabeo Capital, UniCredit, Arvato – a subsidiary of a German media giant Bertlesmann and of course FinLeap. Moving into Asia will give SolarisBank access to a wealth of a set of new customers.

In October 2016, the company even entered into a strategic alliance with MasterCard to cultivate unique banking modules. The company is said to have partnered with over 60 companies on its banking platform including many corporate clients like European car listing service AutoScout24, gift card provider Fashioncheque and the Berlin-based fintech Lendico.

The modules SolarisBank caters to can broadly be divided into three categories which are as under:

  1. Digital banking & cards: This acts as a base to build the retail or SME banking operations.  Cards are the most trending and sought after e-currency that is easy to carry and a comparatively safer option to keep.
  2. Payments and E-Money: This feature enables clients to offer gift cards facility or free or paid vouchers facility or peer-to-peer payments or cross-border payments etc. using SolarisBank’s payment API.
  3. Lending & Deposits: This feature lets the companies integrate one of the core banking functions of consumer loans or SME loans directly into their own process.

Benefits of associating with SolarisBank

  • Fully licensed bank: As all the regulatory burden is taken care of by the platform, thus helps the clients to focus on developing the best possible product.
  • Modern and fast technical support: SolarisBank provides the most advanced APIs in the market, thus having an edge over other players in the market.
  • Neutrality: It is a B2B2C platform, thus it has to maintain strict neutrality with its partners.
  • Speed & Flexibility: This company provides banking services as a platform to its customers; hence it has to maintain speed and flexibility. Also, this platform’s approach along with a startup mindset reduces customer’s time to market.

Awards and Recognition

SolarisBank has received many awards and accolades; it was one of the finalists for the “Most Disruptive Innovation” Award at the 2016 Global Banking Awards, held in Spain. In 2017, it was included in the list of The Fintech 250. In the same year, the Fintech 50 also named the company as one of the 50 hottest Fintech companies of Europe.

Conclusive lines

SolarisBank is a not name that the world is currently much familiar with, but a decade ago nobody had ever heard of such banking services as a platform. SolarisBank is operative in almost seven countries as of now and expects to increase its customer base to more than 100 corporate clients by the end of the year. The range of products SolarisBank platform can power is pretty extensive and can support a large number of operations on its platform. The future of fintech world will be based on how well interconnected are their ecosystems rather than the single streams. The banking as a platform (BaaP) model will accelerate this process and bridge the gap between the old and new financial worlds, and create an ecosystem for fintechs. However, as the banking revolution accelerates they may become names that are as familiar as the traditional bank brands.

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