How Will Adyen’s Tap to Pay Affect Starling’s UK SMEs?

Starling Bank has partnered with financial technology platform Adyen to launch a new suite of features designed to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) accept card payments directly within the Starling app.

The collaboration focuses heavily on streamlining backend financial infrastructure for small businesses, removing the friction traditionally associated with merchant acquiring and daily cash flow management.

Turning smartphones into terminals

The expansion to the partnership kicks off with the rollout of tap to pay technology. 

The feature allows Starling’s SME customers to accept contactless payments on eligible smartphones, completely bypassing the need to purchase, maintain or manage separate hardware terminals.

By embedding Adyen’s processing technology directly into Starling’s existing architecture, business owners do not need to leave the banking application to interact with a third-party payment processor. Once activated, users can accept payments “within minutes”, the announcement says.  

Transactions clear quickly, with funds landing in the merchant's account the next business day to protect vital cash flow. The entire lifecycle, spanning onboarding, settlement and refunds, is handled entirely within the Starling ecosystem.

Sami Kade, Director of Customer Solutions at Starling notes: “Starling is committed to helping small businesses get paid more quickly and easily,” 

“The introduction of tap to pay, followed by payment links later this year, empowers our customers with another tool to help them be good with money. Making the process of getting paid easier, allows business owners to redirect their energy towards the thing that matters most: growing and running their business.”

From a security and technical perspective, customers of these SMEs simply hold their card or digital wallet near the merchant’s smartphone. 

The transactions are processed via near-field communication technology, which includes built-in accessibility options and PIN-on-glass capabilities.

Crucially for compliance and data security, transaction information and card details are never stored on the physical device or external servers.

Integrated financial ecosystems

For the fintech sector, this integration highlights a growing trend: the convergence of business banking and merchant services into a single, unified interface. 

Rather than operating separate banking and merchant accounts, SMEs can now handle both functions via a singular cloud infrastructure.

Nicole Olbe, UK Managing Director, Adyen explains: “Tap to pay technology removes traditional barriers to accepting card payments by turning a smartphone into a secure, user-friendly payment terminal. 

“By combining Adyen’s financial technology and banking capabilities with Starling’s UK banking infrastructure, we are helping UK SMEs bridge the gap between their payment processing and daily financial management,”

“This gives businesses the flexibility to accept payments wherever they operate, backed by the confidence of two trusted financial partners.”

Later in 2026, Starling plans to expand this suite by introducing payment links for its free, in-app invoicing tool. 

The update will allow small businesses to generate links and collect payments from customers via card or mobile wallet within a few clicks, further centralising their billing systems.

By removing hardware costs and shortening the settlement cycle to 24 hours, the joint proposition directly targets the operational bottlenecks that frequently hinder small business growth. Nicole and Sami both highlight that the collaboration relies on the technical pairing of Adyen's global acquiring rails with Starling's established UK clearing infrastructure.