Synthix Arrival Signals Birth of the Curated Financial Marketplace for Treasurers

Published: October 14, 2025

By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI

The new standalone Deutsche Bank platform, Synthix, launched today, is the first SaaS-based platform offering a broad multi-provider ecosystem of services. Ole Matthiessen, Global Head of Cash Management & Head of Corporate Bank APAC MEA, Deutsche Bank, and Deeptasree Mitra, Head of Synthix, walk TMI through the offering.

Synthix is the first bank-agnostic holistic platform of its kind to be offered to treasury and finance teams. The solution, offered by Breaking Wave DB Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Bank, is initially being targeted at the bank’s mid-size and large corporate clients in the UK, Europe, and India. It is already live in these regions. Additional markets, and extension to non-Deutsche Bank clients, is planned for the next phase.

The platform, described by Matthiessen as “a key element of its innovation strategy”, represents what he says is “a bold step beyond traditional banking to deliver future-ready financial solutions”. It is seen as complementary to the bank’s existing products and services.

The launch version of Synthix is based on two core applications: Synthix Finance and Synthix Flow. Both are designed to integrate seamlessly with multiple banks and payment service providers.

Synthix Finance is a “multi-bank cash management insights tool”, says Matthiessen. “It is very much focused on real-time cash management and payment services, but also data insight tools. It enables clients to see, and forecast, their global cash positions, with full transparency across different cash and liquidity holdings among their banking partners.”

Ole Matthiessen

Global Head of Cash Management & Head of Corporate Bank APAC MEA, Deutsche Bank

Offered alongside is Synthix Flow. This intends to empower the bank’s clients with the best solutions to either pay or be paid. It can use their preferred banks, PSPs or acquiring service providers. “In a fragmented world, in many cases our clients need or want to adopt a number of PSPs to meet local demand,” explains Matthiessen. “Synthix Flow enables clients to have full integration of these domestic solutions, giving them a one-stop-shop experience on a global basis.”

By enabling the clients’ customers to adopt local digital solutions, and move away from archaic mechanisms such as cheque or cash payments, Synthix will also remove the pain of reconciliations, with the bonus of real-time updates delivered direct to an ERP.

Standalone but fully integrated

Synthix operates independently from Deutsche Bank’s core banking systems. This ensures secure separation between bank and client data. In adopting this structure, alongside a modular, API-first architecture, connection with third party providers is possible, offering “true multi-bank connectivity”. It ensures clients are not completely bound to Deutsche Bank, and have multiple options for third-party providers, such as PSPs or card acquirers, notes Matthiessen. These options will be brought onto the platform over time, adding to the Synthix marketplace feel.

In addition to Deutsche Bank’s own product and service set, businesses are able to explore and connect with a wide range of best-in-class partners and solutions, including other banks, PSPs, and ERP systems. Consideration will be given to onboarding the preferred providers of clients in each territory, ensuring end-client financial interactions are made as easy as possible.

A new approach for a new age

The genesis of Synthix is in the historically segmented approach by banks when providing financial services across areas such as transaction banking, markets, risk management, advisory, and financing.

“What we have experienced over the last few years is a major shift into the age of digitisation and automation, with AI, quantum computing, and agentic solutions making huge strides in the private space,” comments Matthiessen. “But the way banks servicing multinational and mid-cap corporates are connecting them on a cross-border basis has transitioned too.”

The increased internationalisation of clients through digitisation and automation means financial services are more needed than ever, says Matthiessen. Whether it’s financing, payment, risk management, and even advisory, he sees those services as being increasingly rooted within the clients’ underlying processes. “But now their ability to consume them depends much more now on how well technically those services are embedded and then connected into their own wider ecosystems.”

Banks know they have to immerse themselves in this world in order to retain or enhance their position. And they can do this by offering their services holistically, suggests Matthiessen. “It’s why we are now launching Synthix as a multi-provider SaaS marketplace for financial services and beyond.”

Ready for change

Although clients are at various stages of technological advancement, Matthiessen notes that “there’s not one of our corporate clients that has not in one shape or form undertaken a digital transformation programme”. Whether these transformations are in the planning stages or at an advanced point, he also is aware that their complexity in many cases reaches beyond the client/bank relationship into the end-client realm. This may see elements within the long-tail supply chain, for example, still subject to the inadequacies and extra cost of legacy payment tools, and this inefficiency carries all the way up the chain.

“We need to empower our clients by providing them with a superior technical solution for their end-clients,” declares Matthiessen. “This will enable faster and easier payments and enhanced reconciliations of those end-client transactions.” As an example of the inherent ease of use of Synthix, he says open banking architecture is leveraged to offer clients a tool to issue invoices and collect payments with a QR code. Correct data every time, he comments, supports enhanced reconciliations.

Of course, Matthiessen understands that some resistance to change is inevitable. “But this is exactly why we’ve launched this SaaS entity. We’re not only thinking about enhancing the connection between us and our client but about those onwards connections too.”

To build confidence in these new digital solutions, Deutsche Bank is developing product demos, and online how-to videos, which will be made available, along with the usual sales consultancy services.

“What we are striving towards are client process efficiencies,” says Mitra. “But the art of the possible needs to be built out from an educational perspective, with the information made openly available through product pages and API developer portals, and our team is ready with clear guides on integration into client ecosystems.”

Not like all the others

While there are a number of initial partners already live, or in planning, on Synthix, clients are being encouraged to guide the team on the third-party solution integrations they wish to see, says Mitra. “When clients come to us and want to use the solution, we recognise that they might already have other financial service or third-party partners that they would like us to engage with, in order to give them this complete offering.”

Deeptasree Mitra

Head, Synthix

Matthiessen stresses the point that Synthix is a client-centric platform, “as opposed to another channel through which Deutsche Bank can sell its product and services”. This, he states, “is a very important differentiation”.

Indeed, while Mitra acknowledges that most banks are investing in digital technologies, often buying in third-party services, she believes that Synthix offers the start of a new approach. It marries the solidity and trust that Deutsche Bank encapsulates, with the creativity and agility of fintech, she believes. This delivers on the Deutsche Bank vision of banking as a “seamless, end-to-end, holistic proposition”. It’s ambitious, she admits, “but we are putting down the right foundations with Synthix”.

Commercially, Synthix will enable Deutsche Bank to leverage different fee models, says Matthiessen. He continues that the platform will offer competition to some third-party system providers that currently take fees from the bank’s clients.

“This is not a play for the business of major core system providers in the treasury space, but it is intended as an alternative for clients when consuming add-ons from those providers. And we believe it’s one that benefits from the halo effect of Deutsche Bank as a service provider, both in terms of trust, and in our capacity to work with strong partners to deliver new and connected ideas to our clients.”

Ultimately, the connection that Synthix establishes between Deutsche Bank, its clients and their onward relationships, and other service providers, is about enhancing entire financial ecosystems, declares Matthiessen. “It’s about providing the best possible data, which brings with it transparency and new forecasting capabilities. But it also serves as the bedrock for the introduction of more digital end-client solutions, reaching across these ecosystems.”