1. A Cloud Bank
20th September 2017
Sam Everington
Lead Engineer
@samever

3. So we built a bank from scratch
Founded by
Anne Boden
2014
Jan 2016
Starling raises
$70M
July 2016
PRA grants
banking license.
1st live account
September 2016
MasterCard
Debit cards
November 2016
Alpha testing
consumer app
January 2017
Starling becomes
13th member to
join Faster
Payments
December 2016
Processing
direct debits
February 2017
Launched Beta
testing program
May 2017
Public App
Store
Launch
June 2014
Kick-off with
Regulators
September 2015
Started building
the prototype
July 2017
Apple Pay
Sept 2017
Android
Pay

4. Entirely Mobile Banking - Debit Card, Faster Payments, Direct
Debits, Current Account Switch Service, Apple & Android Pay
Instant Spending Insights - Starling Pulse, Instant notifications,
Merchant and Category Groupings, Maps and Logos
Overdraft Controls - Adjust in app (within an agreed limit),
with clear fee structure and charges
Best for Travel - Pay zero fees abroad (card usage or cash
withdrawal)
Card Control - Lock your card if you misplace it; unlock it if you
find it.
Public API - Open to all third party developers; customers own
their data and choose who to share it with

5. security > resilience > scale

6. velocity > economy

7. architect for change

8. embrace cloud

9. a Starling service
• everything in our core infrastructure is either:
immutable service in EC2 (docker on CoreOS)
data in a managed service
• simple AWS approach - not small
• ELB / ASG / RDS across 3 AZs in eu-west-1
• “service discovery” is just DNS (Route53)
• all specified in CloudFormation nested templates
• with configuration and versions in S3

10. production chaos
• we know we’re resilient because we kill servers all the time

12. Taking it to the next level
Insurance
FX
Connectivity
Where I
spend
Mortgages
Other
current
accounts
Loans
Investment
A marketplace for the
best products, solving
money problems

13. Marketplace for your financial life

14. PSD2 & Open Banking
• PSD2 allows AISPs & PISPs (TPPs) to access data about a
PSU held by an ASPSP via an API
• (subject to the RTS for SCA being defined by the EBA)

15. PSD2 & Open Banking
• Open Banking
UK legislation for the big 9 banks
Read balance & transactions, instruct payments
• Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2)
EU legislation for the payment industry
Standardises compliance, regulation and capabilities

16. The future
• Banking could become a commodity service
Transparent banking
• Mix and match products / providers
• New ways to pay
• New industries we never thought of

17. Risks & Challenges
• Money laundering / fraud
• Sanctions
• Security vs. simplicity
• Trust and accessibility
• Data protection

18. Getting involved
• Marketplace www.starlingbank.com/marketplace
• API Developers developer.starlingbank.com
• Customers www.starlingbank.com
• Community community.starlingbank.com

19. SAMUELEV
@samever