Solarisbank receives a massive cash injection from Series D funding. With the new capital one takes over the competitor Contis and expands to the UK at the same time.
The Solarisbank is happy about a windfall. In the course of a financing round, the Berlin FinTech took in around 190 million euros. Both existing donors such as Pathway Capital Management or the Ilavska Vuillermoz fund and Decisive Capital as a new investor took part in the Series D Funding. Due to the income, Solarisbank mutates into a unicorn with a company valuation of 1.4 billion euros.
But that’s not all. Because the majority of the capital raised, around 140 million euros, flows directly into the takeover of a competitor. The media had previously reported unanimously of any plans. Now go out of the Message Solarisbank also shows which company it is exactly. The choice falls on the British FinTech Contis. The acquisition marks one of the largest acquisitions that a German financial start-up has made. Baha Jamous, Vice President for Marketing and Communications at Solarisbank, explains the decision to BTC-ECHO:
In order to gain access to Great Britain, which is of the greatest strategic importance for us and our partners, we decided not to apply for our own license and to partner with Contis. There were several reasons in favor of Contis: We share the same vision about the future of embedded finance. In addition, Contis has an e-money license in the UK and in the 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 “complements” the clientele of Solarisbank excellently. Sales and profitability also played a role, says Jamous.
Solarisbank and Contis will initially remain 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” is what Solarisbank calls the model in which the bank usually remains in the background. Conti’s business model is based on similar approaches. Here, too, there is an API platform with an associated bank card and account.
However, operations will not initially be affected by the takeover, Jamous assures.
The API platforms from Solarisbank and Contis follow slightly different approaches, with largely overlapping capabilities in the digital banking and cards product range. After the transaction has been completed, the platforms will remain separate from each other for the time being and we will then jointly examine where interlinking makes sense. Our goal is to enable the partners of both companies to easily expand internationally.
Baha Jamous, vice president of marketing and communications at Solarisbank
Speaking of expansion, Solarisbank is, of course, pushing this ahead with the takeover. It only recently expanded into France, Spain and Italy. Years ago there were also plans for expansion in the direction of Asia. However, these have not been further specified at the moment, says Jamous.
At the turn of the year, BTC-ECHO paid a visit to Solarisbank. You can read about how the Berlin fintech works here.