Happy birthday to us: solarisBank turns 2!

Riding on the wave of our recent Series B funding, the energy in the solarisBank office over the past couple of weeks has been buzzing. And while the heightened office merriment could be attributed to the news of our funding round, we had even further cause for commemoration. Around the same time the news of our investment round came out, our young company happened to reach a milestone of its own. On March 10th 2 years ago, solarisBank was conceived. And despite our rather short existence, our birthday has turned into a special day amongst solarians. In the two years since our conception, we have grown from under 10 solarians to over 150. We’ve raised 82.9€ million in funding, and on-boarded 60 partners to our platform. Last, but certainly not least: most recently we were voted Fintech of the Year 2017 in the later-stage category by Paymentandbanking, one of the most renowned fintech outlets in Germany. And we don’t plan on stopping yet! Let’s take a look at a few key memories that happened along the way.

1. It all started with “Project Sun”, with our company builder FinLeap. At the time, there were just a handful of employees.

The early days: Tobi, Head of Architecture & Technology, presenting our platform model in what was then our new office.

2. On March 10th 2016, solarisBank was “born”. On this day, the company received its full banking license from the BaFin (German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) and the European Central Bank — just 9 months after handing in the application.

3. solarisBank started operating by connecting partners to the platform’s Payments, Credit, and Digital Banking APIs. We billed our first incomes in May 2016 and, in celebration of this milestone, directly spent them.

First Payments partner: Fashioncheque

First Credit partner: Autoscout24

First Digital Banking partner: Kontist

Back when it was easy to get the entire team in a picture!

4. On March 10th 2017, the young but ambitious solarisBank turned 1. In a year, the company grew from 30 employees to 80, encompassing 15 different nationalities!

“One Rotation Around the Sun”: an impression of our 1-year birthday party

5. Fast-forward to December 2017: within 1.5 years, after a lot of hard but rewarding work, the company had 50 live partners using the solarisBank platform.

Some of our Partner Management team members at the end of 2017.

Now in March 2018: solarisBank turned the sprightly age of 2, and we found a little bit of time to celebrate. See some of our 2nd birthday impressions below.

Roland, Marko, and Andreas cutting the 2-year cake

(From left to right) Philipp, Anna, and Amy celebrating in style

(From left to right) Nora, Maria, Eva, Susanne, Lea, and Roksana. Photo bomber: our CEO Roland

To start with, we’d like to thank our amazing team and management (now 150 strong, boasting around 30 nationalities), for your dedication and perseverance in contributing to the growth of solarisBank.

Secondly, we want to say a special thank you to the first of our biggest partners (not all of which are public) for the work together over the tpast 2 years: Kontist, Cringle, Qnips, Fashioncheque, Autoscout24, Gurado, Penta, banqup, Verivox, moneyou, Hufsy, Lendstar, Skyee, smava, and Cashlink.

Finally, an additional thank you to our service providers and other partners for the work together thus far. What started as an idea to fill the demand for banking-as-a-platform is still here, and we are so excited to see what comes next for solarisBank and our partners this year.