On Tuesday, Starling Bank announced the launch of its newly redesigned debit cards across all its products. This news comes just a couple of weeks after money management chatbot Plum announced it was supporting Starling Bank. While sharing details about the new debit cards, Starling’s Art Director, Mark Day, stated:
“Good design is about more than the way things look. It’s about challenging old methods and responding to cultural shifts. Adapting the outdated to meet new ways of living. We built a new kind of bank from scratch because it was clear that traditional banking didn’t really fit into the way we live anymore, and that it only still existed because no-one had got round to changing it yet. And it’s that spirit – questioning old logic, then finding a way that works better – that we’ve brought to the redesign of our new debit card. We decided that we wanted to do everything in-house rather than outsource it, and then once we started the process, we realised that we first needed to understand why bank cards look the way they do.”
Day also noted that he and his team studied consumer behavior and noted:
“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.”
Day went on to add:
“When we’re designing the app, our approach is generally: how can we create something that fits effortlessly into – and improves – people’s everyday lives, and how can we do that in a way that hasn’t been done before? We approached redesigning our card the same way, and while we were determined to create something far more distinctive and memorable than our previous card, we also knew any changes had to reach beyond just making something beautiful. They also had to make sense.”
Check out the new debit card in the video below.