Starling Bank - Mobile Banking 4+

OK, that sounded a bit gushy, but I currently have over 10 different online accounts - including with most of the high street banks. None are better than Starling, and many are absolutely atrocious. Starling works - very well. You WILL be impressed. It's as instant as you can get, has every feature you need, and none that you don't. I also love getting the real international exchange rate when using it abroad without any nasty loading or fees. If you can live without meaningful credit interest on your current account, get a Starling account. You'll be glad you did. There are still improvements to be made: there needs to be the facility to add your own spending categories, as the standard ones are too limited and leave out some important ones like ‘healthcare’. At the moment that would come under ‘lifestyle’ which is way too broad to be useful. It would also be great to be able to see previous month’s spending totals as well as view all transactions in a particular category without having to sift through all your transactions. It would also be useful to be able to set up payments from the savings spaces - so you can have one for bills, one for fun, etc. The ability to have a card linked to one is great, but it is too limited in functionality so I still need a separate non-Starling bank account to budget for and limit leisure spending due to the limited ways you can make payments from them. All in all, a brilliant bank account though.

Hi there, thanks for this lovely review. We're so happy to hear you're loving having spending in real time and no fees abroad. We'll raise feedback to our products team about the ability to create categories, having payments from Spaces and having a bigger functionality. Team Starling

I’m not really a review writer, but for Starling I’ll make an exception. What a brilliant app, and what a brilliant bank. It’s really nice to have my (small amount of) money with a bank that has: 1, an app that is joyous to use and 2, appear to work in an ethical and considered manner. I love the Spaces feature for divvying up your savings into separate holdings, allowing you to set goals for as many items as you want to save for. A couple of things could be improved, for example when exporting a statement you get a total balance that totals all your goals and ‘main’ balance. These are shown separately in the app but under one ‘account’ on the PDF statements. Very minor issue though, to be fair. I hope they release a credit card, and I hope it offers a perk like cash back. Time will tell. Get the app, switch your account, and get banking with Starling. You won’t regret it.

One final thing, and I know I’ve raised it lots with Starling (and it’s one of their top requested features as far as I know), is that the joint account card should be noticeably different to the personal account card. I have to mark my joint account card with a Sharpie. Which is hardly very cool. Starling say they’re aware customers want this, have been aware for some time, but continue to do nothing about it. I ask: how hard can it be? They designed a kite card so why not a joint card?Monese manage it perfectly (their joint account cards are fab).

Hi there, thanks for your review. We're happy to hear you're enjoying the app, specifically Spaces to help you save. We'll raise feedback about Spaces being included in statements and offering a credit card. We already have an online banking feature which you can log into online, but you'll need your app on your phone to do so for security. Team Starling

Have had Starling personal & joint accounts for a few years now, and it works wonderfully. Payments are instant, user-interface is consistent and clear. The “saving spaces” feature is pretty good (though that’s one thing that I think could be improved). As a bank, I’m very, very happy with Starling.

What could be improved: the Saving Spaces (sub accounts) are not integrated properly into the payment analysis feature. Payments to and from spaces (and from spaces to payees) are ‘invisible’ to the payment analysis features, which limits their use. Also joint account Spaces cannot have their own debit card(s). That would be a very useful feature for household management (and for letting kids have a debit card).

Potential improvements: Spaces should be able to designated as “Sub-Accounts” with a spending category, so movements to and from them are counted as credits and debits to the main balance (useful for planing for a wedding, or large project); or as “Budgets”, for which movements would be transparent, but payments from them would count against spending analysis on the main account (useful for budgeting everyday expenses). Also, every Space should get its own virtual Debit Card, for use in Apple Pay. And spending transactions should be able to be moved into a budgeting space retrospectively.

Hi there,

Thanks so much for the review and feedback. We're delighted to hear Starling is working so well for you, and you're happy overall. We also really appreciate the detailed suggestions around Spaces. We've raised them with our team for you, so they can look into this in more detail for the future. Keep an eye out for any improvements!

Many thanks,

Team Starling