Starling Bank to Expand into Asia-Pacific

Starling Bank plans to make its first expansion outside of Europe, moving into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

The British neobank has been in talks with an Asian bank about taking its Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform, Engine, into a country in Asia, although it declined to identify the country or Asian bank, CNBC reported Friday (Aug. 11).

Starling Chief Commercial Officer Nick Drewett said in the report that he foresees a bright future for the company in APAC.

“We’re quite happy with the pace that we can absorb the implementation — and that will accelerate with every implementation,” he said, per the report. “… It will never completely be cut and paste, but it will be able to accelerate as we become more material.”

The company’s banking partner in APAC will use Engine to provide banking services to small- to medium-sized business (SMB) accounts, rather than to provide personal banking services, Drewett said, per the report.

Launched in March 2022, Engine is a technology platform that Starling licenses out to other FinTechs and large banks, according to the report. Now, the platform is being used to launch Starling’s international expansion.

Rather than relying on a partner bank to debut its retail banking and lending services, Starling will license its technology out to lenders, enabling them to launch their own digital-only banking brands from scratch, the report said.

The company has been expanding in the past few years, per the report. Originally starting as a challenger bank in the U.K. market, Starling has since grown to an established brand with more than 3.6 million customers, and over 510,000 SMB customers.

“We’re positioning this as a partnership, not just a Software-as-a-Service transaction,” Drewett said in the report.

Starling reported in May that its profits had increased six-fold and its revenues were rising. The neobank’s lending was up as well, and its deposits climbed 17%.

The company is one of the few European neobanks to turn a profit, having logged its first full year of profit in July 2022. Most of the sector is struggling because the field is crowded, the profits are thin, and there is competition for wallet share.