Griffin

UK banking-as-a-service from a company that holds its own full banking licence

As of 1 September 2026, Griffin starts at £100/month. A UK banking-as-a-service platform that is itself an authorised bank, so client money sits in a licensed institution rather than with an EMI or a sponsor arrangement. Softwr lists it under APIs. Griffin is made by Griffin Bank Ltd, available on Web, REST API.

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Overview

What Griffin does

Griffin provides API access to UK bank accounts, payment rails including Faster Payments and Bacs, safeguarding and client money accounts, an integrated ledger, debit cards and automated customer onboarding. Fintechs and platforms build products on it without operating their own bank or negotiating a separate sponsor relationship. The licence is the fact that separates it from most of the category. Griffin obtained a UK banking licence with restrictions in 2023 and exited mobilisation with a full licence in 2024, making it a bank rather than middleware sitting on someone else charter. That means deposits are held by an FSCS-eligible institution and the regulatory chain has one fewer link, which matters after several years of UK and US regulators pressing sponsor banks over their fintech programmes. Griffin also publishes prices: business banking from 100 pounds a month, and platform banking with a one-off onboarding fee from 15,000 pounds plus monthly package minimums starting at 3,500 pounds. Buyers are UK fintechs, wealth and lending platforms and firms with client money obligations. The trade-off is scale and scope: it is UK-only, young as banks go, and the platform minimums put it out of reach of very early ventures.

What people use it for

A wealth platform that must hold client money in a licensed bank rather than an EMI safeguarding account
A lender wanting UK accounts and payment rails without becoming a bank itself
A fintech burned by sponsor bank instability that wants the deposit holder and the API provider to be the same entity
A platform needing sub-account ledgering for pooled client funds with a clean audit trail

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Griffin.

Platform banking carries a one-off onboarding fee from 15,000 pounds and a 3,500 pound monthly minimum, which prices out early-stage companies entirely.
It is UK-only, so a business with European or US operations needs a second banking provider and a second integration for those entities.
It is a young bank with a small balance sheet relative to incumbents, and enterprise counterparties still ask hard questions about concentration risk.
Holding a banking licence means Griffin applies bank-grade due diligence to its own clients, so onboarding is slower and more selective than an EMI-based provider.
Feature breadth is narrower than long-established providers, particularly in card programme management and in payment types beyond core UK rails.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Griffin

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Griffinvs
Synctera
Synctera: If your programme is in the United States and you need a sponsor bank marketplace
Griffinvs
Weavr
Weavr: If you want packaged embedded finance for SaaS rather than raw bank accounts
Griffinvs
Qonto
Qonto: If you want a business account for your own company rather than infrastructure to build on

Pricing

What Griffin costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Business Banking

£100 /mo

From 100 pounds per month
Interest or commission from around 1.75 percent AER variable
Operational accounts and UK payment rails
Eligibility criteria apply

Platform Banking

£3,500 /mo

One-off onboarding fee from 15,000 pounds
Minimum monthly spend of 3,500 pounds, drawn down by usage
Higher committed tiers at 5,000 and 10,000 pounds with discounts
Six to eight week go-live timeline quoted

Enterprise

On request

Custom pricing
Bespoke account structures and volumes
Negotiated interest or commission share
Dedicated implementation support

Capabilities

Features

Bank accounts by API
Operational, client money and safeguarding accounts created programmatically
UK payment rails
Faster Payments, Bacs and direct debit access
Integrated ledger
Sub-account ledgering for pooled client money structures
Automated onboarding
Know-your-customer and know-your-business checks built into the platform
Debit cards
Card issuing on top of Griffin-held accounts
Interest on balances
Commission or interest earned on deposits, from around 1.75 percent AER variable

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Is Griffin actually a bank?

Yes. It received a UK banking licence with restrictions in March 2023 and a full licence in March 2024 after exiting mobilisation.

What does it cost?

Business banking from 100 pounds a month; platform banking from a 15,000 pound onboarding fee plus a 3,500 pound monthly minimum drawn down by usage.

Does it cover Europe?

No. Griffin is a UK bank serving UK accounts and UK payment rails.

Keep looking

Where to go from Griffin

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Griffin, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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