Starling co-founder to launch Ziglu crypto digital bank

Mark Hipperson, who left Starling in the summer of 2016, has been working on the new venture, named Ziglu, since late 2018, and is planning a public launch for January 2020. Ziglu is an app that lets customers transfer funds between conventional money and cryptocurrencies.

Ziglu will allow users to hold both conventional currency and a range of five cryptocurrencies in an app-based wallet with an e-money licence. Thanks to integration with big crypto exchanges, money can be quickly exchanged between the available currencies, and can be spent selectively using either a card or mobile payment device. The start-up has so far been supported by its founders’ cash and through angel investment, but has rapid expansion plans. Hipperson has ambitions for Ziglu to process USD 1 billion in transactions in 2020, and says he will expand the business into the US as early as the fourth quarter of the same year.