Starling Bank signs Romanian Salt Bank as its first SaaS client

Starling Bank recently signed on with a Romanian financial institution Salt Bank as the very first client of its new Software-as-a-Service platform, Engine.

Salt Bank to use Engine to bring digital banking to Romanian customers

Salt Bank, formerly Idea Bank, is a Bucharest-based financial institution and a subsidiary of Southeastern Europe’s largest bank, Banca Transilvania Financial Group. It is also an ambitious bank that intends to disrupt local banking through the introduction of digital user experience.

Salt Bank has millions of customers who could benefit from digital banking and are highly interested in doing all of their banking from their phones. It is also working on an app that is expected to launch at some point in 2024. Once live, the app will be available and useful to both individuals and businesses.

As for Starling Bank’s Engine, it is a proprietary banking platform created using cloud technology. With Salt Bank being its first user, the platform will allow it to onboard customers digitally and offer them services like card transactions, payment processing, and alike. It will also be able to manage its operations in the customer service sector, loan management, financial crime monitoring, payments, and more.

Salt Bank’s CEO, Gabriela Nistor, commented on the opportunity by saying that Engine offers the best-in-class platform for her company. Engine is a perfect fit for Salt Bank’s digital strategy, and it impressed the bank’s leadership with its success with Starling Bank in the UK.

Starling Bank offers an unmatched customer experience

Starling is a major bank itself, with over 3.6 million customer accounts. It also regularly ranks the highest when it comes to top-notch customer experience, making its platform the perfect candidate for onboarding clients into the digital banking space and doing it seamlessly.

After all, whenever a company of any kind needs to introduce new technology to its users and customers, good user experience and ease of use are a must, otherwise, customers may simply seek out a different, simpler solution.

Starling excels at offering excellent UX, and it even scored a win in Australia, with AMP setting aside $60 million to create new app-based banks that would run entirely on Engine.

The new digital bank division will target sole traders, as well as small businesses that have up to 20 employees, offering them services of transaction processing and access to savings accounts. Its launch is expected to take place in Q1 2025, so there is still some time left until it is ready to go live.