Banking
STARLING BANK & PAYEXPO EUROPE 2017
Published by Gbaf News
Posted on August 24, 2017
9 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Gbaf News
Posted on August 24, 2017
9 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Julian Sawyer, Chief Operating Officer at Starling Bank, is delivering a speaker session titled ‘With 159 logins every second, can we deny the rise of mobile baking’at PayExpo Europe 2017, taking place 4 & 5 October at London’s ExCeL.
Julian Sawyer
How does Starling Bank stand out from what is now a significant crowd of challenger banks?
Starling Bank, with its mobile only current accounts, was the first digital challenger bank:
We move with and adapt to our customers’ needs. We keep up with their dynamic lives with fast-paced implementation and continuous updates and improvements to our banking app. Communication within the Starling Community and the community who work at Starling means we can keep our finger on the pulse when it comes to what the consumer wants. We do one product – a mobile-only Current Account – but we do that one product very well. The way that we open doors to other services is through the Starling Marketplace, a connective platform enabled by open APIs. Our APIs therefore put us in a leading position to create partnerships with other FinTechs and start ups, giving our customers more choice in terms of services such as loans and mortgages and expanding this digital ecosystem. We have taken the time to build, test and improve our APIs before launching which now means that the 40,000 customers who pre-registered have access to our a product which can empower them to understand their money and lead healthy financial lives.
We’ve seen challenger banks taking on different strategies. Some, like Tandem and Atom, have gone with conventional banking software from the likes of FIS Global and Fiserv but you and Monzo have chosen the more challenging route of building yours from scratch – the ‘full stack’ approach.
What advantage does this give you in the long run?
As our CEO Anne Boden said, “Starting a bank is not for the faint-hearted. But it’s ever so worthwhile.” Building our own bank from scratch means that we can give our customers exactly what they want, not what the suppliers offer us. Our ‘full stack’ approach reduces costs and yields greater flexibility and control for our service.
The digital banking mantra is clearly ‘the customer comes first’ and consumers are starting to expect a lot more from financial services providers. Are you at all worried that the incumbents banks will catch on, start offering their customers a similar experience and trample on the digital bank USP?
Incumbent banks are bound by layers of outdated systems and established patterns of behaviour in terms of serving their customers which would be difficult to change from the inside. Our CEO Anne Boden recognised this from her thirty years in the banking industry and decided that the only way to truly put the customer first was to build a bank from the ground up, placing technology and the customer at its heart. It is for this reason that Starling will stay ahead of the curve when it comes to integrating banking and technology and creating the best for our customers.
Building a bank from the ground up is not an easy task, what was the main obstacle Starling Bank have experienced along the way?
Passion and perseverance paid off when we gained our full banking licence in July 2016 – a great achievement. Today our main challenges are learning exactly what our customers want so that we can deliver it, and hiring the best talent.
Being an innovative challenger bank you recently launched your new Faster Payments service, have you found this has increased consumer usage of your service?
Our Faster Payments service and consumer service are enabled by the same Faster Payments membership but are distinct from one another. We decided to become a Sponsor bank of Faster Payments and extend the service to non-members due to our awareness of an increased demand for access to a digital, real-time payments system.
Starling Bank has helped disrupt the banking sector and introduced new ways of thinking, where do you see the industry going?
The industry is going digital. The speed, convenience and connectivity of managing your money completely from your mobile is revolutionising banking, which may cease to revolve around buildings and be 100% cloud based, a key feature of Starling. A further key element of Starling, enabled by technology, is real-time payments and real-time notifications – a feature many traditional banks are yet to catch up with.
Is your long-term strategy to stick to digital only or would you consider creating a brick and mortar bank?
The only Starling bricks and mortar will be the office which holds our growing and diverse team of technologists, artists, money experts, designers, and marketers. Solid banks and static banks which cannot adapt and change according the customer’s needs and expectations and deliver in today’s digital world.
For more information, please visitwww.payexpo.com/europe/welcome
Julian Sawyer, Chief Operating Officer at Starling Bank, is delivering a speaker session titled ‘With 159 logins every second, can we deny the rise of mobile baking’at PayExpo Europe 2017, taking place 4 & 5 October at London’s ExCeL.
Julian Sawyer
How does Starling Bank stand out from what is now a significant crowd of challenger banks?
Starling Bank, with its mobile only current accounts, was the first digital challenger bank:
We move with and adapt to our customers’ needs. We keep up with their dynamic lives with fast-paced implementation and continuous updates and improvements to our banking app. Communication within the Starling Community and the community who work at Starling means we can keep our finger on the pulse when it comes to what the consumer wants. We do one product – a mobile-only Current Account – but we do that one product very well. The way that we open doors to other services is through the Starling Marketplace, a connective platform enabled by open APIs. Our APIs therefore put us in a leading position to create partnerships with other FinTechs and start ups, giving our customers more choice in terms of services such as loans and mortgages and expanding this digital ecosystem. We have taken the time to build, test and improve our APIs before launching which now means that the 40,000 customers who pre-registered have access to our a product which can empower them to understand their money and lead healthy financial lives.
We’ve seen challenger banks taking on different strategies. Some, like Tandem and Atom, have gone with conventional banking software from the likes of FIS Global and Fiserv but you and Monzo have chosen the more challenging route of building yours from scratch – the ‘full stack’ approach.
What advantage does this give you in the long run?
As our CEO Anne Boden said, “Starting a bank is not for the faint-hearted. But it’s ever so worthwhile.” Building our own bank from scratch means that we can give our customers exactly what they want, not what the suppliers offer us. Our ‘full stack’ approach reduces costs and yields greater flexibility and control for our service.
The digital banking mantra is clearly ‘the customer comes first’ and consumers are starting to expect a lot more from financial services providers. Are you at all worried that the incumbents banks will catch on, start offering their customers a similar experience and trample on the digital bank USP?
Incumbent banks are bound by layers of outdated systems and established patterns of behaviour in terms of serving their customers which would be difficult to change from the inside. Our CEO Anne Boden recognised this from her thirty years in the banking industry and decided that the only way to truly put the customer first was to build a bank from the ground up, placing technology and the customer at its heart. It is for this reason that Starling will stay ahead of the curve when it comes to integrating banking and technology and creating the best for our customers.
Building a bank from the ground up is not an easy task, what was the main obstacle Starling Bank have experienced along the way?
Passion and perseverance paid off when we gained our full banking licence in July 2016 – a great achievement. Today our main challenges are learning exactly what our customers want so that we can deliver it, and hiring the best talent.
Being an innovative challenger bank you recently launched your new Faster Payments service, have you found this has increased consumer usage of your service?
Our Faster Payments service and consumer service are enabled by the same Faster Payments membership but are distinct from one another. We decided to become a Sponsor bank of Faster Payments and extend the service to non-members due to our awareness of an increased demand for access to a digital, real-time payments system.
Starling Bank has helped disrupt the banking sector and introduced new ways of thinking, where do you see the industry going?
The industry is going digital. The speed, convenience and connectivity of managing your money completely from your mobile is revolutionising banking, which may cease to revolve around buildings and be 100% cloud based, a key feature of Starling. A further key element of Starling, enabled by technology, is real-time payments and real-time notifications – a feature many traditional banks are yet to catch up with.
Is your long-term strategy to stick to digital only or would you consider creating a brick and mortar bank?
The only Starling bricks and mortar will be the office which holds our growing and diverse team of technologists, artists, money experts, designers, and marketers. Solid banks and static banks which cannot adapt and change according the customer’s needs and expectations and deliver in today’s digital world.
For more information, please visitwww.payexpo.com/europe/welcome
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