Starling Bank, a UK-based digital and mobile-only challenger bank, has secured £75m funds to further expand its business operations.
Image: Starling Bank is a UK-based digital and mobile-only challenger bank. Photo: courtesy of Starling Bank.
Starling Bank has secured £60m under series C funding round led by Merian Global Investors, while participants include companies such as Merian Chrysalis Investment.
The digital bank has also gathered additional £15m from its existing investor.
Starling Bank will use the funds to expand its financial products in retail and SME banking sectors, as well as to enhance banking services in the UK.
The funding will also allow the digital banking platform to optimize its global expansion, beginning with Europe.
Launched in May 2017, Starling mobile banking app has a customer base of 460,000 personal current accounts and 30,000 SME accounts. It is expected to reach a mark of one million customers by the end of this year.
Starling’s banking services division, which has advanced class banking and payments infrastructure for third parties, serves 20 institutional clients.
Starling Marketplace is claimed to be the Europe’s first fully integrated financial marketplace, which enables customers to access third-party financial services. It currently has 11 partners, with more firms in the pipeline.
Starling’s latest product euro account enables UK residents to hold, send and receive euros for free.
Starling Bank founder and chief executive Anne Boden said: “Building our platform and launching in the UK to provide genuine choice to retail, SME and Banking-as-a-Service customers was just the first step. Our ambition is to use our technology to build a next-generation global, digital banking platform, starting with our launch across Europe this year.”
Merian Chrysalis co-portfolio manager Nick Williamson said: “The Starling team has developed a highly impressive and efficient platform, which we believe positions it well to continue to take share in core banking markets, as well as the ability to offer innovative new services in the future.”
Based in London, Starling Bank is a digital bank that offers offering personal, business, joint and euro current accounts. It also runs Marketplace and Payment Services for banks, e-money institutions, government and corporate.