What we do

Starling Bank offers mobile-only personal, business and joint current accounts. Accounts can be set up in minutes and offer real-time notifications, spending insights, multiple payment methods (via Samsung Pay, Garmin Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Fitbit Pay) and no unauthorised overdraft fees, in addition to traditional functions, such as the ability to set up Direct Debits, standing orders and payments.

Customers earn interest on their current accounts and Starling’s in-app Marketplace allows access to a range of financial products, including insurance and pensions.

Users can lock lost debit cards with one tap, while Starling’s Settle-Up feature allows them to easily split bills with friends and family. Its London-based customer services team is available 24/7 and customers can also give feedback through an active online community.

Starling was the first to develop a mobile-only proposition for the Current Account Switch Service, allowing new users to switch between banks in a simple, reliable and stress-free way. It was the first to offer Faster Payments with real-time notifications.

How we do it

While the big banks are spending billions on their digital transformations, Starling has built a fully functioning retail bank on its proprietary technology in less than 18 months for less than £20 million. Because it began with a blank sheet, with no outmoded legacy IT systems in place, it is able to deliver more with certainty at a lower cost and in less time. With no branches and no legacy IT systems to patch up, its cost basis is very different compared to traditional banks and it only uses cloud hosting.

Key to the Starling approach is the belief that having an IT department is a broken model. After a 30-year career in traditional banking, in which she pioneered the UK’s first same-day payment service, Anne Boden was very clear from the outset that it’s more productive to have all the people with different skill sets who are going to be involved with a project working together from end to end.