Starling Bank, a U.K.-based digital bank, says it will launch a technology offering called “Starling-as-a-Service” for European clients next year. The toolset allows brands – both financial and non-financial – to launch financial services offerings on top of Starling Bank’s backend technology.

Why should we care?
Banking-as-a-service is emerging as an alternate revenue stream for fintechs, digital banks, as well as legacy banks. For example, a year ago, Goldman Sachs launched Goldman Sachs Transaction Banking, a product suite that allows clients to embed banking services into their own products (it expanded that offering to the U.K. market in June). With Starling-as-a-Service, businesses will be able to build financial products on Starling’s banking platform, including savings or checking accounts, integrated digital wallets, children’s cards, and debit cards. Starling will handle the technical and regulatory requirements, “leaving businesses to take care of their customers with innovative embedded banking solutions,” the company said. Starling launched banking-as-a-service in the U.K. in 2018 and has 25 payment clients, including Raisin, CurrencyCloud, Moneybox, and Vitesse. “This is a huge change from the past when any brand that wished to add a financial component to its offering would be signing up to a significant undertaking,” Starling CEO Anne Boden wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Embedded finance means it really is possible to add all of the functions of a fintech, with little more than a credit card and a laptop.”