berlin digital banking platform solarisbank will enter a string of new european markets next year ceo roland folz told reuters on monday as it became the first german bank to shift its entire operation into the cloudthe berlinbased startup operates a socalled banking as a service model enabling partners like south koreas samsung electronics to offer branded accounts and financial products to their customerssolaris said it had completed the migration of its core systems digital products and databases to aws the cloud computing unit of amazon within a year of launching the projectthat positions the provider of digital bank accounts and payment cards knowyourcustomer checks and lending services to expand together with its partners into countries like france italy and spainwe want to grow with our existing partners and ensure that they can spread their business and value proposition across europe folz said in an interviewfouryearold solaris raised 60 million euros 72 million in june from investors led by hv capital bringing total backing to 160 million euros at the time it hosted 400000 accounts a number that has since grown to 750000growth potentialthe partnership with samsung whose venture arm has also backed solaris introduced the korean smartphone leaders payments app to germany as well as offering a splitpay product for users to buy now and pay latertying its whitelabel services into branded ecosystems makes solaris a play on a shift away from traditional banks to mobile financial services solaris also supports fellow berlin startups vivid money a personal finance app and commissionfree stock broker trade republicwith an estimated 80 million samsung device users in europe converting even a couple of percent of those would create a digital bank with more than a million usersthe ambition level could be higher said folz a veteran of deutsche bank the opportunity is there to build a substantial financial powerhouse for any of the big techs out thereof a total market of 1 billion accounts in europe half could be taken by technology ecosystems rather than traditional banks folz reckonsthat would put maybe 500 million accounts up for new ownership he said theres a tremendous opportunity to win some of those