SolarisBank becomes a unicorn and takes over the competitors

SolarisBank receives massive cash injection from Series D funding. A competitor with new capital takes over Contis and at the same time expands to the UK.

SolarisBank is unexpectedly happy. During one financing round, Berlin Fintech took in approximately 190 million euros. Both existing donors such as Pathway Capital Management or Ilavska Vuillermoz Fund and Breakthrough Capital as a new investor participated in the Series D funding. With the proceeds, Solarisbank turns into a unicorn with a company valuation of 1.4 billion euros.

but that’s not all. Because most of the capital raised, about €140 million, flows directly into the acquisition of a competitor. The media had previously unanimously reported any plans. go out now Message SolarisBank also shows which company it really is. The choice falls on the British Fintech Contis. The acquisition is one of the largest by a German financial start-up. Baha Jamous, vice president of marketing and communications at SolarisBank, explained the decision to BTC-ECHO:

In order to gain access to Great Britain, which is of greatest strategic importance to us and our partners, we decided not to apply for our own license and partner with Contis. There were several reasons in favor of Contis: We share a similar view of the future of embedded finance. In addition, Contis has an e-money license in the UK and EU (via Lithuania).

Baha Jamous, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at SolarisBank

Further reasons are the complementary product platform as well as the customer base, which “completely complement each other” with SolarisBank customers. Sales and profitability also played a part, says Jamous.

SolarisBank and Contis will initially be separate

SolarisBank is one of the first fintechs with a full banking license through which companies can offer their own financial products. Customers can access services in the areas of payments, credit business and digital banking as well as integrated third-party providers through an API connection to the platform. “Banking as a Service” SolarisBank calls the model in which the bank usually stays in the background. Conti’s business model is based on similar approaches. Here too, there is an API platform with the associated bank card and account.

However, operations will not be affected initially by the acquisition, Jamus assured.

SolarisBank and Contis’ API platforms follow a slightly different approach, with largely overlapping capabilities across the digital banking and card product range. After the transaction is completed, the platforms will remain isolated from each other for some time and then we will jointly examine what interlinking means. We aim to enable the partners of both companies to easily expand internationally.

Baha Jamous, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at SolarisBank

On the expansion front, SolarisBank is certainly taking it forward with acquisitions. It has recently expanded to France, Spain and Italy. There were also plans to expand to Asia years ago. However, these have not been further specified at this time, Jamous says.

At the end of the year, BTC-ECHO visited SolarisBank. You can see how Berlin Fintech works Here read.