> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # How Does Griffin Make Money? A Bank Fintechs Build On - URL: https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/how-does-griffin-make-money-a-bank-fintechs-build-on/ - Published: 2026-11-04T11:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-04T11:53:54.000Z - Description: Griffin sells no accounts to the public, yet fintechs build on it. See how this bank earns from onboarding fees, monthly packages and interest. - Author: Editorial Desk - Tags: Founder Stories Griffin is a UK bank that does not sell accounts to the public. Its fact sheet lists Uber, Yonder and Marqeta among its customers, and it earns its living by letting companies like them build **financial products** on its licence. So **how does Griffin make money?** The answer sits on a pricing page few people outside fintech read, and in a model its chief commercial officer sums up in four words. We went through Griffin’s own pages, Companies House and the trade press, and kept only what we could trace. --- ## What Is Griffin? The UK Bank Built for Fintechs Griffin is a UK bank that gives fintechs and platforms accounts, payments and onboarding tools through an API, so they can launch financial products without holding a banking licence. Griffin Bank Ltd was **incorporated on 29 June 2017**. It is authorised by the **Prudential Regulation Authority** and regulated by the **Financial Conduct Authority** and the PRA, firm reference number 970920. Griffin’s former chief commercial officer, Adam Moulson, called it “**the AWS of banking**”. Griffin banking as a service rests on that idea: a bank that companies build on, rather than one they simply use. --- ## Griffin’s Growth, Funding and Founders **David Jarvis** and **Allen Rohner** founded Griffin in 2017, and the bank has raised about $65m, according to its own fact sheet. Jarvis is ex-Airbnb and Rohner co-founded CircleCI, Griffin says. Moulson traces the idea to Jarvis’s time on the core banking system at an **API banking startup**, and to what he saw at Airbnb: businesses investing heavily just to manage money. The money followed. Griffin raised $13.5m (£11m) in June 2023, led by MassMutual Ventures, and $24m (£19m) in March 2024, led by MassMutual Ventures, NordicNinja and Breega, with Notion Capital and EQT Ventures taking part. It did not disclose a valuation. Full operations began in March 2024 with five companies. By December 2025, Griffin said it had 50+ platform customers, about £3 billion in payments processed and **fivefold revenue growth** in just over a year. It has not published the baseline, so the fivefold figure remains Griffin’s own claim, which we cannot verify. --- ## How Does Griffin Make Money? Griffin says a lot of its income is fee-based, so under the **Griffin bank business model** it relies less than traditional banks on interest from lending out deposits. What does that look like for a single platform? Its pricing page, checked on 3 November 2026, lists a one-off onboarding fee from £15,000 and go-live in six to eight weeks. The platform then picks a monthly package, and each transaction draws it down. | Minimum monthly spend | Discount Griffin lists | | --------------------- | ---------------------- | | £4,000 | None listed | | £6,000 | Up to 10% | | £10,000 | Up to 30% | | Enterprise | Custom | Business bank accounts carry monthly fees from £100\. All of these are “**from**” prices, and Griffin asks customers to get in touch for details. Interest and commission depend on who owns the account. If the platform owns it, the platform earns the interest. If the platform’s customers own it, they earn the interest and Griffin can pay the platform commission on those balances. The pricing page shows **interest or commission from 1.75%**, variable and tracking the Bank of England base rate. Griffin does not publish its income by line in the materials we reviewed, so we cannot say how much comes from fees and how much from deposits. --- ## Griffin Banking as a Service: The Products Behind the Revenue The offer covers business, safeguarding and client money accounts, embedded savings, embedded bank accounts, payments and automated onboarding checks. Griffin’s fact sheet (August 2026) breaks it down like this: - Safeguarding accounts ring-fence customer money for e-money and payment institutions. - Client money accounts serve property, wealth and solicitor platforms under CMP, CASS or SRA rules. - Embedded savings accounts let brands offer FSCS-protected savings inside their own product. - Verify bundles KYC, KYB and AML checks into one API. - Payments run over Faster Payments, CHAPS inbound and instant transfers between Griffin accounts. Griffin says these are real bank accounts with their own account numbers, not virtual accounts. --- ## The Griffin Bank Business Model: Why the Banking Licence Matters The model rests on its banking licence, which Griffin says lets it pay interest, unlike non-bank payment providers. The licence took almost two years. Griffin applied in May 2022, won authorisation with restrictions on 7 March 2023 and announced on 11 March 2024 that the PRA and FCA had lifted them. Moulson called it the c**ompany’s biggest challenge**, and said Griffin’s guiding principle was to be fully open with regulators. ![Griffin Bank Business Model](https://storage.ghost.io/c/05/a4/05a4a052-18ab-4836-8924-ec8b322c371c/content/images/2026/11/Modern-Corporate-Office-Workspace.png) Griffin Bank Business Model The licence also underpins deposit protection. The FSCS limit rose to £120,000 per depositor, per PRA-authorised firm, on 1 December 2025, and Griffin says its savings and embedded bank accounts carry FSCS protection. --- ## Griffin Embedded Banking: Who Builds on It It serves fintechs and platforms in wealth, lending, payroll, proptech and insurance, with Yonder, Prosper, WealthKernel and LettsPay among its named customers. In December 2025, Griffin said more than **50 platform customers** were live on Griffin embedded banking, alongside Uber, Marqeta, Access Group, Aspora and Sidekick, which were live or still testing. The platform’s side shows in the small print. TransferGo’s savings summary says its customers earn the Bank of England base rate minus 1%, a margin TransferGo sets, on accounts provided by Griffin. --- ## How Griffin Compares with ClearBank and Starling ClearBank is the closer comparison to Griffin, since both supply embedded accounts from a banking licence, while Starling’s Engine licenses banking software to other banks. As we explored in our analysis of [**how ClearBank makes money**](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/how-does-clearbank-make-money-the-uks-first-new-clearing-bank-in-250-years/), ClearBank reported UK normalised revenue of £117.7m for 2025, up 32%, and UK pre-tax profit of £12.2m, up from £8.0m. Group fee-based revenue now makes up three quarters of the total, and ClearBank manages £17.8bn of deposits across 279 clients. Starling’s Engine reported £70m of committed annual recurring revenue and 25% revenue growth for the year to 31 March 2026, with SBS Bank its fourth client. How do **Griffin’s earnings** stack up against theirs? We cannot compare income line by line, because Griffin has not published comparable figures in the sources we reviewed. We think what the three share is a bet that companies will pay to build on banking infrastructure someone else already runs. --- ## What Founders Can Learn from Griffin’s Model The Griffin bank business model gives founders three lessons: define a narrow customer profile, treat regulation as part of the product and price in tiers that reward commitment. 1. **Start narrow:** Moulson’s advice is that an ideal customer profile should feel narrower than is comfortable, and that turning away exciting companies is part of the discipline. 2. **Regulation is the product:** We think the licence is what customers of Griffin banking as a service rent, and it took almost two years to win. 3. **Reward commitment:** Griffin’s pricing page offers savings of up to 30% at a £10,000 monthly package. --- ## FAQs ### 1\. What does Griffin bank do? Griffin is a UK bank that provides business, safeguarding, client money and savings accounts, payments and onboarding checks to fintechs and platforms through an API. It does not offer accounts directly to the public. Its customers build the products through Griffin embedded banking, and the accounts sit with Griffin. ### 2\. Is Griffin a real bank? Yes. Griffin Bank Ltd is authorised by the PRA and regulated by the FCA and PRA, firm reference number 970920, and Companies House classes it as a bank under SIC code 64191\. The regulators lifted its restrictions in March 2024\. The FCA register shows its current permissions. ### 3\. Who founded Griffin bank? David Jarvis, now chief executive, and Allen Rohner, now chief technology officer, founded Griffin, which was incorporated on 29 June 2017\. Griffin says Jarvis came from Airbnb and Rohner co-founded CircleCI. ***Read More:*** [***How Does Skyscanner Make Money? Inside Its Commission Model***](https://entrepreneurplus.co.uk/how-does-skyscanner-make-money-inside-its-commission-model/) --- *Sources: Griffin company fact sheet (updated August 2026), Griffin pricing page and FAQs (checked 3 November 2026), Companies House, Maddyness (April 2024), City AM, Financial IT, Bank of England and PRA, ClearBank FY2025 results and Starling Group FY26 results. Figures reflect the most recent data available at the time of writing, and Griffin’s pricing and product listings can change.* ***The EP+ Editorial Desk covers UK startups, founder stories, and venture capital. All editorial content is independently produced and human-reviewed before publication.***