German private bank Sutor Bank is to enter the banking-as-a-service market with the release of a new set of APIs to provide digital businesses such as fintech startups with a full range of banking processes, including investing, lending and payments.
Founded in 1921, the German B2C and B2B banking outfit is re-engineering its business for the digital age, working with software provider Pass to extend its API infrastructure, enabling mobile and Web-based startups to plug directly into its core banking platform.
Sutor Bank’s owner and managing director Robert Freitag says the startup platform has already been tried and tested by emerging fintech providers fairr.de and Deposit Solutions.
“With the new APIs Sutor Bank is becoming a one stop shop for all digital businesses," says Freitag. "In the future, firms will receive all banking services from Sutor Bank as their single source, allowing them to provide these services to their own customers.”
As well as offering white-label banking services, Sutor also works with fintech firms on developing joint business models.
“Our experience shows that APIs are not sufficient for co-operations since they solely represent the technical side of things,” says Freitag. “In most cases we have to design a process to meet our clients‘ requirements as well as the regulatory once - even if it’s only a simple payment process at the first glance. Sustainable business models have to comply with regulatory rules — today and in the future. Our experience shows that many business models fail not because of technical issues, but because of regulatory ones.”
Earlier this month, German regulatory body BaFin granted a banking license to Berlin-based tech company solarisBank, which has built an API-based platform to power startups in the digital economy.