Starling Bank Business Banking

About Starling Bank

Starling Bank offer award-winning digital accounts that have taken the UK by storm. Their modern take on traditional banking offers the same tools and services provided by high street banks, but with the convenience of being completely digital. Starling provide their banking services to more than 500,000 UK businesses, and unlike some other online banks, they are fully regulated.

See our full Starling Bank business account review of features, fees and how they compare against other digital bank accounts.

Starling Bank pros & cons

Pros of Starling

• Multi-award-winning business account
• No account fee or standard transaction charges
• Free card payments & ATM withdrawals
• Offers access to multiple directors
• Fully licensed & regulated bank with FSCS protection
• Part of the Current Account Switch Service
• Fast approval & set up
• 24/7 online customer support
• Can deposit cheques in-app for free (up to £1,000)

Cons of Starling

• Online & mobile only with no branches
• Invoicing is only available with their Toolkit, for £7 a month
• Toolkit only available on desktop, not in-app
• Cash deposits are charged a 0.3% fee

Starling business bank account

Starling's Business Current Account is an award-winning solution suitable for sole trader banking, limited companies and partnerships, including new startups.

The account as is comes with no monthly fee or transaction charges but comes with the option to add accounting tools or multi-currency features at a monthly cost.

Here is a summary of charges for the Starling Business Current Account:

Security & protection

Starling are a licenced bank meaning they're regulated by the FCA and your funds are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) up to £85,000.

You can also protect access to your Starling account with a PIN, password or Touch ID. Instant notifications will warn you of unusual activity to protect you against fraud and you can freeze cards and set spending limits via the Starling app.

Purchases are protected by 3D Secure, meaning that you'll receive a notification to authorise payments out, you can do this with one tap.

Eligibility

To be eligible for a Starling business account you must:

• Be a sole trader or limited company, with no more than two owners
• Be a UK resident (both owners must be UK residents)
• Be a UK-based business
• Have an Android or iOS device
• Have a UK phone number

You don't need to have a Starling personal account to apply for their business account but it makes the process much quicker and easier to do within the app.

Opening an account

Here's how to open a Starling business account:

1. Download Starling's app from the App Store, Google Play or AppGallery
2. Complete their digital application - Starling will confirm your eligibility
3. Verify your ID - you'll need to upload a picture ID and a video of yourself
4. Once approved (within 3 days on average), you can start banking

Overdrafts

Starling offer business overdrafts with limits from £1,000 up to £50,000, with varying interest rates of 15%, 10% or 5% EAR, where most customers get a rate of 11.50% EAR.

The arrangement fee charged at 1.75% of the agreed limit, where £50 is the minimum you'll pay.

The Business Toolkit add-on

The Business Toolkit is a Marketplace add-on, for £7 a month, that gives access to additional accounting and bookkeeping features that are useful for businesses without an accountant.

With Starling's Business Toolkit you'll be able to:

• Create and send invoices and match payments with a single click, from desktop only
• View automatically categorised expenses and transactions with tax information
• Get tax bill estimates, suitable for sole traders earning less than £150k per year, who pay by self-assessment
• Record and submit VAT estimates through Making Tax Digital (MTD), with the ability to automate some processes
• Upload bills and schedule payments

The only downside is that the Toolkit is only available on desktop so you won't be able to manage your accounting from their mobile app.

Starling Bank reviews

Starling score an excellent 4.4 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot, based on over 38,500 reviews, with 75% rating them 5-star.

The Starling app gets a near-perfect score of 4.9 stars on the App Store, from over 470,000 ratings.

Starling users give them 4.8 stars out of 5 on Google Play from over 112,000 reviews.

Information correct as of 6th January 2024.

Our verdict on Starling Bank

Starling Bank offer the same standard features as most other banks do but the award-winning challenger bank really come into their own with the additional add-ons, tools and features they provide - which could be essential to a small or new business.

Frequently asked questions

It's not uncommon to have questions when looking in to business banking, especially for the first time. These are some of the most relevant questions for Starling Bank: