Griffin, the London-based Banking-as-a-Service startup, has obtained its full UK banking licence from the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority after a three-year authorisation process. The company, which offers a developer-first API platform enabling fintechs and software companies to embed regulated banking products into their applications, can now hold deposits, process payments through the Bank of England's real-time gross settlement system, and offer savings products directly under its own licence.

Co-founder and CEO David Jarvis described the licence as the culmination of a mission to make banking infrastructure as accessible as cloud computing. "AWS democratised compute, and Stripe democratised payments. Griffin is doing the same for banking," Jarvis said. "With our licence secured, any software company can now embed fully regulated bank accounts, payments, and lending into their product with a few lines of code." Griffin has already onboarded 15 platform clients during its mobilisation phase, including a major UK property technology firm and two European neobanks seeking UK market entry.

The licence positions Griffin as a direct competitor to ClearBank, Railsr, and Modulr in the UK's increasingly crowded BaaS landscape. However, analysts noted that Griffin's developer-centric approach and modern technology stack — built entirely on cloud-native infrastructure — could give it an edge with the next generation of embedded finance providers. The company has raised £28 million to date from investors including EQT Ventures, Seedcamp, and Notion Capital, and is understood to be preparing a Series B round to fund rapid scaling following the licence award.