Skip to main content

Solarisbank concludes Contis deal and plans to go public

 


Solarisbank and Contis confirm partnership with a total turnover of 100 million euros. The Bafin is concerned about the rapid growth of the bank and wants to take a critical look at it.


Berlin -based Solarisbank has signed the final merger agreement with British competitor Contis. The partnership was announced in July 2021, but has finally been completed, as Solarisbank announced on January 28 . 


Strong growth and successful acquisition

Solarisbank raised 190 million euros in a financing round six months ago . The fintech with a full banking license was valued at 1.4 billion euros and rose to the so-called “unicorn”. An accolade that is only reserved for startups that achieve a valuation of more than one billion euros.


In addition, Solarisbank took over Contis Group Ltd in order to be able to establish itself as a leading "Banking-as-a-Service" service provider throughout Europe. Although Contis is smaller than Solarisbank, the British fintech has already won the market-leading crypto exchange Binance and the Austrian neo -broker Bitpanda as customers. Thanks to the acquisition, Solarisbank was able to further strengthen its position in Europe , since Contis has a license as an e-money institute in England and Lithuania and is allowed to issue e-money and offer payment services there. The company also has offices in the UK, Lithuania and India.


Solarisbank and Contis as one unit

However, the partnership has only now been approved by all the relevant supervisory authorities, i.e. the German financial regulator Bafin , the British Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Central Bank of Lithuania. From now on, Solarisbank and Contis will operate as a single entity and can offer “fiat and crypto assets, lending and payments and card issuance and processing in all EEA countries” and even grow “beyond Europe”. 


dr Roland Folz, the CEO of Solarisbank, will lead the entire institute, which employs over 700 people at eight locations in Europe and India . The business figures also confirm rapid development: According to its own statements, the fintech service provider was able to increase its combined turnover to around 100 million euros in 2021 - an increase of 90 percent compared to the previous year. 


In the future, Solarisbank and Contis have planned "sustainable growth in sales in the order of 40 to 60 percent". However, the bank will not be profitable this year. The focus is not on profit, but on “growth and investments in the European platform”, as Folz, who held a managerial position at Deutsche Bank before moving,  explains in an interview with the Handelsblatt.


Possible IPO in Q3

Solarisbank has big plans for 2022. The Berlin “unicorn” wants to offer other crypto currencies in addition to Bitcoin ( BTC ) and Ethereum ( ETH ) , and the introduction of a securities business and ETFs are also on the list. Entry into the decentralized financial markets ( DeFi ) is also planned for the second half of the year.


In addition, Solarisbank wants to go public in the third quarter of 2022 and be ready for the IPO by the middle of the year. Before going public, however, there are still a number of requirements that must be met. Among other things, the bank would have to transform the organizational and management structure and improve many things in the areas of compliance and regulation. 


Bafin special auditor for Solarisbank

Although, according to the press release , the Bafin approved the contract between Solarisbank and Contis, the German financial regulator is nevertheless targeting the Berlin fintech. Last Tuesday, the Bafin informed the bank that it will be supervised by a special auditor with immediate effect. The reason for this is a bank supervisory audit from 2020, in which deficiencies in compliance were identified.


After N26, Solarisbank is the second fintech where the Bafin is using special supervisors. The results of the auditors are then forwarded to the authority. The investigations should be completed by the middle of the year.



Data protection is another area in which Solarisbank still has glaring shortcomings. As the Blocktrainer forum reported on January 25 , some customers of the crypto platform Boerse Stuttgart Digital Exchange (BSDEX), which uses Solarisbank as a partner bank, had access to third-party transaction data. However, only a “small number” of customers are affected. According to Finance Forward magazine, the problem has now been resolved . 

My Top Picks
Honeygain - Passive earner that pays in BTC or PayPal
MandalaExchange -The Best no KYC crypto Exchange! 
BetFury - Play And Earn BFG for daily Bitcoin and ETH dividends!
Pipeflare - Faucet that pays in ZCash and Matic, Games pay in DAI
Womplay - Mobile dApp gaming platform that rewards in EOS and Bitcoin
Cointiply - The #1 Crypto Earning Site
Torum - Join the latest Social Network and earn TRM for Free! 
LiteCoinPay - The #1 FaucetPay earner for Litecoin 
Upland - Collect Digital Properties & Test Your Skills
LBRY/Odysee - YouTube Alternative that lets you earn Money by viewing videos!
FaucetPay - The #1 Microwallet Platform
FREEBTC - The #1 FaucetPay earner for Satoshi's
FaucetCrypto - An earning/faucet site that pays out instantly
FireFaucet - An earning site that pays better for some than Cointiply
DogeFaucet - Dogecoin Faucet
xFaucet - BTC, ETH, LTC, Doge, Dash, Tron, DGB, BCH, BNB, ZEC, FEY - Claim every 5 minutes
Konstantinova - BTC, ETH, LTC, Doge, Dash, Tron, DGB, BCH, BNB, ZEC, USDT, FEY, 25 Claims Daily

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From offchain to offchain: Statechains meets Lightning

  Without a doubt, the most significant off-chain Bitcoin solution is the Lightning network. But in its wake, the statechain has emerged as an intriguing replacement. There is currently a proposal to link the two offchain networks. From an ocean, for example, you can see sunbeams glistening in the water, waves rippling, and possibly a jellyfish drifting toward the light. But you only see a small portion of it. The distance from the sea's surface to its bottom is hundreds of meters. It has dozens of different fish species swimming in it, crabs and starfish crawling on the bottom, shells clinging to rocks, and sea plants climbing up. A completely new world starts where your gaze diverges. You can picture a blockchain like Bitcoin, just like the sea. What you see on the outside is only a small portion of what is actually there; the set of UTXOs (coins) and transaction history that full nodes store are just the beginning of a much larger world. It's the plan, at least. With Bitcoin
Post a Comment
Read more

MSP Recovery and Tokenology aim to optimize healthcare with the help of Polygon

  MSP Recovery LLC, a Miami, US-based healthcare provider with an estimated enterprise value of $32.6 billion, is partnering with Web3 company Tokenology to jointly launch a new blockchain platform called Lifechain. Lifechain wants to leverage the verifiable and transparent nature of blockchain technology to aggregate medical care claims, medical expense reports and patient data and streamline their processing. For this purpose, MSP Recovery launched its own LifeWallet in January, which already has 1 million users. In addition to the wallet and blockchain platform, an associated crypto token called LifeCoin is also used. The press release explains that the primary purpose of the system is to enable secondary healthcare providers to more effectively bill health insurance companies for their costs. “The number of medical claims tokenized going forward will surpass $50 million per day by 2024. For this we need scalability, security and sustainability, which we have only found with Polygon
Post a Comment
Read more

British financial regulator criticizes cooperation between Binance and Paysafe

  The British financial regulator FCA has expressed concerns about the partnership between market-leading crypto exchange Binance and payment service provider Paysafe. As the British regulator complains, the partnership gives Binance access to the influential British payment network Faster Payments Service (FPS), from which the crypto exchange was previously cut off. Last June, the FCA ordered Binance to stop all business activities in Great Britain. As a result, prominent banks such as Barclays have terminated their cooperation with the leading crypto trading platform . Through the cooperation with Paysafe, Binance can now again offer deposits in British pounds sterling and transactions within the European Payments Area (SEPA). However, this fact is a thorn in the side of the FCA, as it classifies the crypto exchange as a “considerable risk factor”. However, the financial regulator sees little room for maneuver to counteract this, as the Financial Times reports . “ Paysafe understands
Post a Comment
Read more