Solarisbank Becomes Unicorn With EUR 190 Million Series D Funding

Berlin-based Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform Solarisbank has raised EUR 290 million in an oversubscribed Series D funding round, the startup announced.

The funding was led by Switzerland-based Decisive Capital Management while new investors Pathway Capital Management, CNP (Groupe Frère) and Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital participated in the round. Existing investors led by yabeo Capital, alongside BBVA, Vulcan Capital and HV Capital also provided significant additional investments.

With the current funding round, Solarisbank became a unicorn with a valuation of € 1.4 billion, the press release noted. The startup had previously raised € 60 million in its Series C funding round in June 2020 at a valuation of €320 million. This indicates that the startup’s valuation has grown nearly five times in 13 months.

Including the current investment round, Solarisbank’s total funding stands at over € 350 million. The startup will use the fresh funds for business expansion.

Founded in 2016, Solarisbank facilitates embedded finance by helping banks and fintechs to integrate financial services into their own product offering via APIs. The startup offers a range of financial services through 180 APIs that clients can use to build products for end-users. These products include basic banking and card services, lending, payments, and know-your-customer services. Solarisbank has a full German banking license.

Thomas Schlytter-Henrichsen, Partner at Decisive Capital Management, noted,

Thomas Schlytter-Henrichsen

We are experiencing a paradigm shift in banking, where customers expect financial services to adapt to their specific needs. Technology is the key to enable this transformation and Solarisbank’s powerful Banking-as-a-Service platform positions it perfectly for this new banking era.

Since its last funding round, Solarisbank has migrated its full tech stack to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. The startup has also moved all its clients to its core banking system developed in-house. This has enabled Solarisbank to set a new European benchmark in terms of cost efficiency, scalability and service quality, the company claims.

Recently, Solarisbank announced its official market entry in France, Italy and Spain, where it will offer local international bank account numbers (IBANs) to its partners. The startup has nearly 50 clients including well-known industry names like Trade Republic, American Express, BP, Samsung and Vivid. Through its customers, Solarisbank’s services cover nearly 2 million end-user accounts.

Alongside its funding announcement, Solaribank also declared that it is acquiring rival Contis. Founded in 2008, Contis is a leading profitable pan-European BaaS provider. The acquisition will help Solarisbank expand its offerings to all over Europe and start expanding to Asia, Solarisbank CEO Roland Folz told Techcrunch.

According to Folz, the combined entity with generate revenues of hundreds of millions of euros. Solarisbank recorded net revenue of €35 million in 2020. The combined entity will be led by Folz while Cox will support the transition in his new role as Senior Advisor and shareholder.