Starling Bank has announced the launch of a new virtual card for its personal current account customers.

The virtual card works like a standard debit card for payments but is linked to a ‘saving space’ in the bank’s app, instead of the main account balance.

The saving space can be personalised, which the bank says gives customers more control over their budget.

When the savings budget is used up, the virtual card will decline instead of dipping into a customer's main balance.

Similar to physical cards, the virtual cards have a unique card number, expiry date and CVV.

Starling said that its customers can have up to five virtual cards at any one time.

“Our customers asked for virtual cards and we’ve delivered,” said Helen Bierton, chief banking officer, Starling Bank. “Virtual cards allow people to completely compartmentalise their personal finances for better control of their spending, making it easier to stick to budgets.”

The bank has also announced the redesign of its spending insights tool.

Customers are now able to analyse their spending from specific spaces on the platform, including having access to interactive graphs which track spending patterns.

The move marks Starling's second update to spending insights this year, after 36 new spending categories were added in June.

“We’re constantly thinking of how we can help our customers manage their money better," continued Bierton. "We’ve been busy building these new features, as well as our new Budget Planner, to help us continue this mission."

Starling recently announced a 20 per cent increase to headcount since the start of 2022 to more than 2,000 employees.

The bank said it plans to grow its headcount by a further 10 per cent before the year end.

Starling’s Cardiff office now has 1,000 employees, while 650 are based at its London office and 400 in Southampton.

New hires have bolstered Starling’s engineering, financial crime, customer service and card operations teams, which the bank plans to grow further to support its three million-plus customer accounts.

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