IBS Journal April 2016
solarisBank BaaP service greenlighted in Germany
German regulator BaFin has granted a banking license to solarisBank, a Ber- lin-based venture which has built an API-based platform designed to meet the needs of digital companies. It is looking to partner with e-commerce business and FinTech startups on this. IBS Journal caught up with Marko
Wenthin, formerly of Deutsche Bank, to discuss the birth of solarisBank and what lies ahead. Wenthin founded the compa- ny in 2015 with Andreas Bittner, whose previous roles included Managing Director of Avaloq Sourcing and Managing Director of Fondsdepot Bank.
IBS Journal: How did the idea to create solarisBank and its BaaP come about? Marko Wenthin: The initial idea for
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solarisBank came from within the FinTech company builder FinLeap. Many FinLeap ventures needed banking services to build core elements of their products, and need- ed to partner with banks in order to do so. We came to understand the shortcomings of existing banks quite well: extended timelines, outdated systems and processes, and most of all, a wariness to do business in the digital economy. The initial idea was to obtain a banking
license for our own purposes, but we soon realised that the opportunity was consider- ably bigger than the initial problem. There wasn’t a single bank worldwide focused on technology partnerships with FinTechs and digital companies in general. There is massive demand for a company offering banking services that truly understands the
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needs of FinTechs and digital businesses, and can move at their pace. So we decided to create an agile, cutting-edge tech platform offering modular banking services not only to FinLeap companies or FinTechs but to the digital economy as a whole. But simply building a friendlier bank in the same model wasn’t going to be enough. So we built a tech company offering banking services in a completely different model, as modular API-accessible bricks you can use to enable exactly the solution your business needs.
IBS Journal: Why is now the right time
for your BaaP offering? MW: The digital economy has needed banking services for quite some time but the only answer has been to endure with
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