Starling is a digital bank, which is backed by Goldman Sachs, and its boss recently directed criticism towards the crypto industry. According to the fintech boss, digital currencies can threaten the global payment systems’safety. On Tuesday, Anne Boden spoke in Amsterdam at the Money 20/20 fintech conference and said that cryptocurrencies are very dangerous. Starling is based in Britain and the digital bank was founded in 2014 by Boden. People can use an app for opening checking outs that are free of any fee, or get loans. The private valuation of the company had been around $3.1 billion or 2.5 billion pounds.
Some prominent names have made investments in Starling, which include Fidelity Investments and Goldman Sachs. Boden stated that payment schemes were allowing people to connect their crypto wallets and this was threatening the safety of the payment infrastructures. It is a fact that cryptocurrencies have been embraced by some of the major players in the payment industry. For instance, credit card giants like Visa and MasterCard had also incorporated digital assets on their network. Likewise, people can also trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies via PayPal. Regulators have become increasingly worried about the integration occurring between the volatile crypto space and the traditional financial markets.
The last month alone saw almost $400 billion wiped out from the crypto market, as the collapse of the algorithmic stablecoinTerraUSDand its sister cryptocurrency LUNA, took the investors by surprise. This is not the first time that Starling’s boss has issued a warning about crypto. She had previously warned about people becoming victims of scams because of their eagerness to dip their toes in the crypto market. On Tuesday, the Starling boss said that people were getting scammed and they had to spend a great deal more time in protecting people from scams than promoting crypto.
Boden was also questioned whether her bank would ever offer crypto and she responded that it was quite unlikely in the next few years. She further disclosed that where anti-money laundering policies are concerned, there are a lot of things that these crypto companies need to be familiar with. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the regulatory authority in the UK. Back in April, it had disclosed that the results of a review indicated that online-only banks were not putting in a lot of effort for tackling financial crime.
While the regulatory authority did not mention any names, it was confirmed that Starling had also been evaluated by the FCA. A spokesperson had gone as far as saying that the firm was quite vocal about combating fraud. This is not the first time that cryptocurrency has become the target of criticism, as there have been plenty of others who have expressed their doubts about the reliability of crypto. As a matter of fact, these talks have only intensified with the recent problems in the crypto market, as this has given critics the ammunition they need for proving that the market is unreliable.
