The Software as a Service (SaaS) arm of Starling Bank has announced the launch of what it describes as Romania's first digital-native bank.

The company’s core banking engine platform is the same API-based technology used to power Starling Bank in the UK.

Salt Bank has already onboarded 100,000 Romanian customers in two weeks.

Engine by Starling is a SaaS technology provider that applies its modern banking platform to banks around the world.

Starling said that the move marks the first time it has rolled out its technology outside the UK.

The new bank launches as the most downloaded financial app in Romania, with ambitious plans to reach one million customers in the next three years.

"A year ago we had only two things: we had a powerful idea to help Romanian customers and a first line of code," said Gabriela Nistor, chief executive, Salt Bank. "Since then, we’ve taken a huge “salt” (Romanian for “leap”) in technology and banking for the Romanian market."

Salt, which was built and launched in under 12 months, offers transaction accounts in local and 16 foreign currencies for retail customers, as well as deposit protection up to the limit of €100,000.

"Our work with Salt Bank shows just what our platform is capable of; Starling’s feature rich and highly personalisable banking products can be deployed around the world to attract impressive customer volumes, while our operational experience and cloud-expertise can help build, launch and run a bank in less than 12 months," said Sam Everington, chief executive, Engine by Starling.

Engine announced Salt as its first customer in November 2023, followed by AMP Bank in Australia, which will be launching a new digital bank offer targeting the small business and consumer markets in 2025.

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