Starling Bank expands Banking Services with three new partnerships

Starling Bank, the leading digital banking platform, is expanding its Banking Services offering with the addition of three new partners, providing them with access to its expertise and proprietary best-in-class banking and payments infrastructure. The partnerships come as Starling today announces it has raised £75million to accelerate its global expansion.

Telleroo, PelicanPay and Vitesse, providers of business to business (B2B) payments for corporates and other institutions, are partnering with Starling in a compelling example of Open Banking in action.

Starling is providing them with:

Real-time access to Faster Payments and direct access to Bacs
Simple integration with Starling’s secure and PSD2-compliant APIs
Simple and transparent pricing with zero capital investment required

The new partnerships represent a further sign of growth at Starling’s Banking Services business and demonstrate the breadth of its client base. Existing clients include the Department for Work and Pensions and the savings and investment marketplace Raisin UK. Starling’s payment volume growth is doubling month-on-month and the bank anticipates many more clients joining in the first quarter of 2019.

Speaking today at the annual Payments Forum in London, organised by the Centre for Financial Professionals (CFP), Julian Sawyer, Head of Banking Services at Starling, said: “Starling Banking Services has a wide range of clients from banks and e-Money institutions to UK Government. With Telleroo, Vitesse and PelicanPay, we demonstrate how our capability can also help corporates with real-time payments. All of these services are accessed through our open APIs.”

Mr Sawyer, a member of the CFP’s Fintech Advisory Board, added: “Starling’s Payment Services unites our banking licence, payments expertise and tech with our customers’ financial product – so they have more time to focus on building up their businesses.

Starling will be providing Telleroo with payroll payment services for its clients. With Vitesse, it will be enabling insurance claim payouts, while with PelicanPay it will process payments for a range of clients, including fintechs and third party providers.

Parth Desai, Founder and Chief Executive of Pelican and PelicanPay, said: “Partnering with Starling Bank will enable PelicanPay to provide an innovative Open Banking business payments service that delivers comprehensive invoice to payables automation.”

Michael Riedler, Chief Executive of Telleroo, said: “I am beyond excited about Starling/Telleroo, this is an absolute game-changer for Telleroo clients. Fintech is all about great partnerships and this is the best example; slick payments software powered by Starling’s modern banking infrastructure. This is another stepping stone for further disruption in the business banking value chain and Telleroo is very glad being part of this with Starling.”

Stefan Burkwood, Chief Strategy Officer at Vitesse, said: “Vitesse is delighted to be working with Starling Bank for its UK Faster Payments solution. The Starling API will enable us to process these payments in an efficient and economical way, allowing us to grow our volume seamlessly. We look forward to developing our relationship with Starling Bank.”