On 17 November 2020, Curv announced that Solaris Digital Assets GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Europe’s leading banking-as-a-service platform Solarisbank, has become a customer of Curv. This new relationship is a strategic inroad for Curv as the company plans to extend its already existing presence in Europe following the onboarding of several BaFin-regulated custodians earlier this year.
This strategic relationship with an innovative banking service provider extends Curv’s reach in Europe and supports the delivery of Solarisbank’s new depot solution. Solarisbank AG, a tech company with a full German banking license, enables businesses to offer their own financial products in Europe. By leveraging Solarisbank’s modular platform partners like Samsung, American Express, and BP access a wealth of services, including digital bank accounts and payment cards as well as identification and lending services. Solaris Digital Assets selected Curv given it has set a new institutional standard for digital asset security. Curv’s decentralized security model utilizes multi-party computation (MPC) protocols, both eliminating the private key and enabling transactions to be securely signed in a mathematically-proven, distributed way.
“Our companies are uniquely aligned to provide a flexible yet secure banking infrastructure that demonstrates the future of global finance,” said Curv Co-Founder and CEO Itay Malinger. “As a protocol-agnostic technology partner, we deliver a multi-party computation (MPC)-based security infrastructure that eliminates all single points of failure and affords institutions the option of a customized deployment to suit their specific needs for hot, warm, or cold wallet environments.”
Alexis Hamel, Managing Director of Solaris Digital Assets, said: “When we set about our search for a security partner, we found Curv to be the first of its kind. Its technologically advanced cloud-based model and mathematically secure offering aligns with our modular approach. As a crypto-custodian fulfilling all license requirements, we offer our partners a cutting-edge custody solution that is also fully compliant with anti-money laundering regulations in Europe. Turning to a segment leader like Curv gives us peace of mind that we can continue to accelerate the adoption of digital assets.”
In Germany, companies holding digital assets for others require permission from the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht – BaFin). Solaris Digital Assets has submitted an application for the crypto custody license to BaFin. It currently operates under the provisional license for crypto custody.
Solaris Digital Assets wins Bitwala as partner for digital asset custody
Earlier today, Solarisbank AG additionally announced Bitwala, Germany’s crypto-banking flagship company, as a new client for Solaris Digital Assets. Bitwala is leveraging Solarisbank’s platform to offer its customers digital bank accounts and cards. Through this partnership, Bitwala now leverages the full spectrum of Europe’s leading Banking-as-a-Service platform, from digital bank accounts, cards, and KYC to custody of digital assets. Curv’s technology underpins Solarisbank’s new partnership and digital asset product delivery to Bitwala.
“Bitwala is an international crypto banking pioneer and we are excited to deepen our successful and innovative partnership by this significant component. Not only does this enable us to offer Bitwala’s customers a custody solution that is unparalleled in terms of ease of use and security, but also to open up new avenues for additional features such as instant crypto transfers” says Alexis Hamel, Managing Director, Solaris Digital Assets.
Bitwala customers in Europe will be able to store both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) on the Solaris Digital Assets Platform. The new joint service, that will be accessible from January 2021, builds on the existing cooperation between Bitwala and Solarisbank. Since September 2018, Bitwala has leveraged the Banking-as-a-Service platform of Solarisbank to offer its growing customer base digital bank accounts and debit cards.
With the custody solution of Solaris Digital Assets, Bitwala can offer a secure and compliant wallet offering to their customers with benefits such as increased transaction speed and reduced fees. When it comes to security, Solaris Digital Assets distributed approval process ensures that each transaction is separately approved by the end customer, and authenticated by Bitwala before it is validated by Solaris Digital Assets. This model brings additional security for the end customer but also Bitwala by reducing the risk of single point of failure. Bitwala will continue to offer a ‘self-custody’ wallet for advanced users who want to hold their own private keys.
“We have already been leveraging Solarisbank’s Banking-as-a-Service platform for over two years. Thus, the API-based custody service of Solaris Digital Assets was a natural choice to securely safeguard our customers’ digital assets, while still maintaining full ownership over our user experience. By integrating the custody solution, we can ease the onboarding for new customers and significantly enhance the speed of on-chain transactions,“ says Benjamin Jones, CEO & Co-founder of Bitwala.
Source: Press releases Curv and Solaris Digital Assets
Through its partnership with Curv, Solaris Digital Assets joins a growing number of traditional and Kryptonian financial institutions already using Curv technology. Back in October 2020, Curv announced an engagement with global bank BNP Paribas.
