Starling Bank has partnered with mobile point of sale company SumUp to provide small merchants with access to faster settlements.

SumUp’s terminals can be used with an accompanying app, or without an app via the company’s standalone 3G Reader, which comes with an integrated free data card.

Starling’s Banking Services business provides FinTechs like as SumUp with access to payment schemes and a full bank offering all through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

While SumUp lets merchants accept card payments in seconds with a device in hand, traditional banking providers and existing card rails means the process of settlement for small businesses currently requires a waiting time of two to four days for payments to clear. The partnership means SumUp can now ensure UK merchants will soon receive payments on the next business day.

Starling’s Banking Services already names the Department for Work and Pensions, savings and investment marketplace Raisin UK and FinTechs Currency Cloud, Pockit, PelicanPay and Vitesse as clients.

Helen Bierton, head of banking at Starling, said: “Our partnership with SumUp means that whether a small merchant is serving coffee or cutting hair, we are helping to ensure they get paid as quickly as possible so they can get on with growing their businesses.”

Starling was the first challenger bank to be a direct member of the Faster Payments Service and the only banking provider of real-time access to Faster Payments through APIs in the transaction banking world.

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