Fintech synergy as challenger bank teams up with robo advice app

Starling Bank is partnering with app-based wealth manager Moneybox for real-time savings.

Starling Bank is partnering with app-based wealth manager Moneybox for real-time savings. 

Moneybox’s savings and investment services will be now offered by digital-only bank Starling to enable customers to easily open ISAs and round up their spending in real time.

Starling Bank and Moneybox have announced a partnership providing Starling Bank customers with access to Moneybox’s suite of saving and investing tools The bank is the first digital challenger to join the list of banks supported by Moneybox for their innovative round ups feature.

The service will be available to Starling customers as early as the end of April. The mobile bank’s customers will be able to link their Starling account to Moneybox, round up their purchases to the nearest pound and invest the spare change.

The new service is made possible through Starling’s open APIs. The integration has two distinct features. Firstly, it allows customer data to be securely shared between the two apps, meaning transactions will appear within the Moneybox app in real time as customers spend.

Secondly, the integration with Starling means that customers will be able to set up round ups from their Starling account in a matter of seconds.

The Moneybox app will simply request authorisation from Starling; and once the new user has tapped Agree, the signup process is complete. The firms said in a joint statement that this will work in a similar way to logging into other apps and services with Facebook and Google.

Starling Bank publicly launched its API and developer platform to enable external developers and technology companies to integrate with the banking app earlier in April, and Moneybox is the first to launch a live integration on this API.

Megan Caywood, Starling’s Chief Platform Officer, said: says the partnership will be transformational for Starling’s customers.

“People today want to not only manage their everyday money on their phone but their savings and investments too. Working with Moneybox makes this a possibility.”

Charlie Mortimer, Moneybox co-founder, said: “As the first challenger bank to offer an open API, we’re very excited to work with Starling to offer real-time round ups for the first time.

“We've found the round ups concept to be a popular way of helping people get started and breaking the inertia surrounding saving and investment. By making it even easier for customers to save money as they spend, we hope our partnership with Starling will be the first of many.”