Exclusive: BBVA, ABN AMRO and Visa invest in German fintech start-up Solarisbank

By Heinz-Roger Dohms

German fintech player Solarisbank will be announcing a EUR 56.6mn funding round today, the highest financing deal for a German fintech ever, after Kreditech, according to exclusive information obtained by „Finanz-Szene.de“. Spanish BBVA and Dutch ABN AMRO, two of the main investors, are breaking new ground, because up until now, none of Europe’s big banks has made major investments in German fintech start-ups. Two other high-profile stakeholders are Visa and Lakestar, a venture capital fund. “We have found exactly the kind of investors we were hoping for,” explains Gerrit Seidel, Chairman of the Board at Solarisbank, in an interview with Finanz-Szene.de.

Solaris was founded two years ago at Finleap, a fintech incubator in Berlin, who should still be Solarisbank’s largest investor holding a stake of roughly 30%, even after the current funding round, followed by BBVA. All the other investors own single-digit percentage stakes. As for the remaining existing shareholders, SBI Group, a Japanese fintech investor, and Arvato, a subsidiary of the Bertelsmann media conglomerate, have also joined in the current financing round, and Yabeo, a Munich-based venture capitalist, stays on board, too. Hypo-Vereinsbank, on the other hand, has sold its stake to its Spanish competitor BBVA.