Starling bank is what is commonly referred to as a challenger bank. They do not have branches on the high street. You will only find them online and on your portable devices. To get an account, you follow a signup process using their app on your phone or tablet and once accepted you get a debit card in the post.
You can use them as a normal bank as you get a sort code, account number and all the other relevant bits. You can even set up Direct Debits.
Once you have an account, unlike the mainstream banks – you can signup for a developer account. This will then allow you to access your bank via code. It is this code that I am going to use to create a savings tracker.
Getting Started
What you will require
- Raspberry Pi fully setup running Raspbian
- A personal Starling Bank Account
- A Starling Bank developer Account
I am not going to go through the creation of a Starling bank developer account here as it is complex and would fill the blog! However – if people ask @talktech on twitter, I may relent.
Assuming you have all the above now setup, let’s move to the Raspberry Pi side of things
Raspberry Pi Python 3 Library
Let’s install the unofficial Starling bank python library. This is done on the command line, so connect to your Raspberry Pi, either over SSH or directly and get a terminal running.
Now, in the terminal enter the following code:
sudo pip3 install starlingbank
This will download and install the Python3 package for you. It may take a few minutes, but once it’s complete you can start using it.