UK challenger bank Starling has collected £60m in funding and will reward its 800 employees with shares.
The digital bank received the funds from previous investors Merian Global Investors and JTC. In total, Starling has now raised a total of £323m, of which, £105m was raised in 2019 in two rounds from Merian.
With the fresh funds, the bank is looking to increase its expansion efforts as it looks to increase its competition against traditional banks.
Furthermore, the FinTech is issuing shares to all of its 800 employees.
Starling has opened over a million accounts for consumers and small businesses since launching its app in 2017. It claims to hold over £1.25bn in deposit.
It came under fire last year after it was revealed it had only lent 1% of the £913m it promised it would lend out by 2023. Earlier in the week, Starling and payments company Curve were both accused of altering their Wikipedia pages to remove any bad publicity.
Starling Bank founder and CEO Anne Boden said, “The support of our existing investors represents a huge endorsement of our business strategy, as we continue to ramp up our growth.
“We’re constantly innovating and have big ambitions to turn Starling into a world-leading digital bank.”
Earlier in the year, the bank’s founder stated it is looking to go public within the next three years.
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