The U.K.'s mobile-first Starling Bank has received a banking license from the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority.
The two-year-old challenger bank says its checking account would give customers a full picture of their financial situation, different from the traditional way customers manage their money across different accounts, loans and cards.
It also plans to use customer data to provide financial management tools like insights about their spending habits. Starling will create more features and functions with its customer community in the coming months, it said in a Thursday news release. It plans to launch in January.
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The degree of success Starling Bank achieves could foreshadow how similar digital banking entrants in the United States might perform given a narrower product selection, a commitment to mobile, and a focus on collecting and analyzing data.
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Digital-only Atom Bank in the U.K. recently won a banking license a feat U.S. fintech entrepreneurs have either failed to accomplish or not bothered trying, instead partnering with established institutions.
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Starling's CEO, Anne Boden, said that for the past year the company has been building its product "from the ground up." She added that the regulatory support would allow it "to move forward and introduce a new style of banking."
The bank also announced it will join the U.K.'s real-time-payments rail "later in the year." It would be the first "next-generation bank to connect directly to the Faster Payments system," Boden said.
The number of U.K. mobile banking users is expected to double to 32.6 million by 2020, Boden noted in the release.