Starling is expanding its banking-as-a-service and payment services offer, bringing white label banking to the UK.

Access to the digital challenger banks’ proprietary, cloud-based technology via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) will allow companies to launch their own bank accounts and provide customers with payment services such as debit cards.

Starling stated that the move aims to inject competition into a market that has been dominated since the 1960s by the big four clearing banks – Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Depending on a client’s individual needs, they can pick and choose components, or product features, and as they are using Starling’s banking license, they do not need to become a regulated entity.

In payments services, using Starling’s APIs, customers can integrate into UK and European payment schemes to access Faster Payments, direct access to Bacs and the Single Euro Payment Area.

Starling’s payment banking-as-a-service clients include the French challenger bank Ditto, government departments such as the Department for Work and Pensions, and savings and investment marketplace Raisin UK.

Starling also announced that it is working with Instarem, Vitesse, Incuto and AccessPay and has a number of strategic partnerships with companies such as Vocalink, CurrencyCloud, Form3, Railsbank and Bankable. It is also working with FIS Global, the international provider of financial services technology and outsourcing services, which is looking to launch using Starling services.

Speaking today at the PayExpo 2018 conference in London this morning, Starling chief executive Anne Boden stated: “The banking transformation has begun, we're enabling customers to pick and choose the applications and services they need and how they use them.

“The API economy is far more important and relevant to banking than PSD2 and Open Banking – it is changing the rules of the game and does not need legislation for its survival or existence.”

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