Users Divided on Starling Bank’s New Debit Card
U.K. neobank Starling is in a mood to switch things up, at least on the design front. Last week, Starling unveiled changes to the payments screen on its mobile app and today it unveiled a new debit card.
For starters, the new debit card is not purple, Starling’s signature color. Instead it’s teal and navy blue. The new debit card, powered by Mastercard, is vertical with rounded corners and doesn’t have the engraved numbering that almost all cards (credit and debit) have.
Is the design really innovative or is it a way for Starling to make its card standout from the crowd or maybe even a marketing gimmick? Well, according to Starling’s blog post today, the decision to change the card comes from data gathered on customer behavior, and does indeed have practical benefits for the user.
In Starling’s blog post from today:
…They [cards] were designed landscape because of the way old card machines worked, and they’re embossed with raised numbers so they could be printed onto a sales voucher.
But we don’t use those machines anymore, so when you think about it, a landscape card is just a solution to a ‘problem’ that no longer exists. At Starling, we think it’s important that we can justify every decision we make – and we just couldn’t find a reason good enough to carry on using a design based on antiquated needs.
So we studied consumer behavior. If people don’t interact with their bank cards in that way anymore, then how do they use them? The answer seemed obvious: in portrait.
From how you slot your card into an ATM or a card machine to how you tap it for contactless, our lives are largely lived in portrait now, even down to how we use our phones. A portrait bank card reflects how we actually use our cards today; it’s intuitive, instinctive, and in short: it’s just common sense.
But not all users are impressed. While some users took to Twitter to compliment the new designs, others had questions and still others had complaints.
One person tweeted:
https://twitter.com/primalanomaly/status/1021813370960465926
Another tweeter brought up an interesting point in security implications:
https://twitter.com/TechFirth/status/1021676289747562497
Another person commented on the blog:
AddyBryne: I’m not overly impressed with the new design. Rounded corners can make it harder to take out of your wallet. Some businesses, specifically car hire in my experience, insist on embossed numbers on cards. Metal would have been interesting but the most interaction I’ve had using cards is when they are personalized. I think you missed out on a trick here.
Launched in 2014, Starling Bank was one of the first challenger banks in Europe. Earlier this year, it raised about $70 million in funding for its platform. The bank does not disclose its customer numbers, though they are in the “tens of thousands,” according to a Telegraph interview with Starling CEO Anne Boden late last year.
