Opened my Starling account - early last year. Its good and new improvemnts happen regularly making it easy to use and safe. They have paid alot of attention to online security and ease of use.
It integrates with Emma very well and Emma updates quickly adding to Starling a full and useful review of how things are going. Add anouther account like my WealthSimple to Emma and it then Emma is great!!
I use Starling as a main bank account with great satisfaction and am much happier with it that my partner who uses a high street bank.
It seems that Starling can be used across two phones - I updated my phone to a new one - moving the sim over. But the old phone still reports Starling transactions.
Hans
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Have folks seen Starling have fully released their Euro Account? 0.4% fee from September 1st for conversions…not sure it’s going to be as competitive as Revolut for most people. What are people’s thoughts?
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That’s interesting. I wish I could open an account with Starling, I think they locked me out. 
By the way, Emma won’t return EUR accounts, we need to transition to their new API first.
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Even if you are still converting via Revolut or Transferwise, the FSCS protection and greater reliability of Starling compared to Revolut make it a great holding account.
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Where does this come from? ehhehe
Revolut regularly locks my account to review source of funds or some unknown reason.
Last time, they took four days just to respond to a message. Their wait time for compliance is typically 48 hours +…
I’d much rather keep significant amounts with Starling
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Are you doings lots of shuffling around? ahaha
Never happened to me, but I also don’t talk to support ever. 
No, but I do get money into the account from lots of different companies and individuals - or used to.
I use bunq and Starling now instead.
I think if you just use it as a spending card, you probably won’t have the same issues.
Yeah, totally agree.
To be honest, I have only used Revolut when travelling. I don’t see why I should use it day to day. Apple Pay on Amex or Barclays is enough for me. 
I recently tried to take out a phone contract but my Starling card kept declining - I phoned the merchant up and they said that they didn’t have the facilities in place to process any challenger bank (they namedropped Revolut, N26, Monzo, and Starling as not working) - seems absolutely crackers to me, anybody ever heard of this sort of thing?
What merchant was this?
I don’t think they’re allowed to unilaterally not accept these cards - I would reach out to Starling and ask where you can report this discrimination and anticompetitive practice.
I love them really good current account. Would be nice if they could offer me an overdraft but I don’t really go into negative balance (besides on my nationwide account because it’s fee-free overdraft and better gaining interest)
Fee-free spending is great for when my Aqua Rewards is maxed out (in non-GBP country) or if I need to withdraw cash abroad.
For what it’s worth it seems people using Starling typically use it as a proper account - where as Monzo has been marketing to students as a few-free foreign transaction card and as such it doesn’t have as many users using it as a main account (as % of customers)
To keep the personal account great they need to subsidize it from other parts of the business, meaning they need to diversify their revenue streams!
I have one! It’s very nice for peace of mind and to a certain extent hedging to avoid exchange rate collapse.
Wish I could spend in EUR though - my plan is to transfer it to my Revolut should I need to do so.
Can we get an ETA?
I would say this is a good thing. My bank isn’t my friend, especially when it wants to charge me for:
- Cash deposits
- A premium account of terrible value
That and Starling have kept improving their product.
I think this is a good thing. Monzo made their forum tribalistic and that’s a bad image for anyone somewhat skeptic - as such Starling distances itself from radical views.
Spending should come as they gear up for the Irish launch!
From September it’ll have a 0.4% markup.
It beats Revolut by 0.1% should you be converting on the weekend remember that simply spending has no conversion so it’ll beat them entirely for that on weekends (0.4-5% cheaper)
Revolut has been down multiple times due to their payment processor doing maintenance. Often this is only affecting either MasterCard or Visa holders, which is beyond annoying.
Starling however this isn’t present with (unless you’re using it through Curve - which is Curve’s fault. When your entire business is centered around being the sole card in your wallet you should make your systems have 0% downtime)
I shuffle around a lot and never got checked money wise.
Happy as I have to beg for my payslips.
The company was fonehouse - I’d never encountered this kind of practice before and just wondered if anybody else had. I reached out to Starling, they seemed baffled at the merchant’s choice, but didn’t seem to consider it unacceptable - they just thought it was a strange decision on the company’s part! Very odd.
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It smells like bs to me. 
Perhaps ‘not having the facilities in place to process any challenger bank’ is code for the payment systems they use don’t have up to date BIN and/or sort code tables.
I have encountered a merchant who couldn’t set up a direct debit from my Monzo account via their online system. So to make it happen for me they ended up sending a direct debit instruction to Monzo by mail.
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You can’t convert from the EUR account direct to GBP with Starling at the weekend AT ALL
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If they change that*
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Hey, my Euro account suddenly started showing in Emma. What did you do?! 
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We called a wizard. 
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Anyone else missing 1 or 2 Starling spaces in Emma? I’ve got one that’s not showing
I would reconnect, but I’ve got three Starling bank Logins and don’t know which is which!
Has Sterling logged you out?