SALT Bank

Salt Bank is based in Bucharest, Romania and is a subsidiary of Banca Transilvania, the largest bank in Southeastern Europe.

The Salt team had a bold vision for a better, smarter way for Romanian customers to bank with digital-native, mobile-first experiences. They wanted to truly disrupt the Romanian banking market and put the customer at the heart of their offering, combining the innovation and agility offered by modern fintech with the safety and security of being a licensed, regulated bank. By partnering with Engine, Salt has successfully brought its digital banking vision to life with the launch of its app in April 2024.

Our journey with Salt began when their CEO, Gabriela Nistor, and management team came to London to meet with us. Starling’s story was a key topic of conversation, with the Salt team wanting to get under the hood of how the bank had achieved success. Starling is a pioneer in the digital banking world, launched in 2014 with a mission to change banking for good. Today, it’s a highly profitable bank and was one of the first mobile-only banks built entirely in the cloud and with its own proprietary technology – Engine. Starling now has over 4.5 million accounts in the UK that it can service cost-effectively and at scale while consistently achieving high customer satisfaction scores. Much of Starling’s success stems from its technology, and Engine’s mission is to share that core banking technology blueprint with other banks around the world.

When Gabriela and the team discussed their ambitions and goals for Salt, the synergy was clear. Engine had the frictionless technology platform and human-first approach that they needed, and the real-world experience of building and running a successful digital bank. Both teams were motivated by a real belief and shared vision for what could be achieved in the Romanian market, and project implementation started in March/April 2023.

Salt had a clear vision for the bank and wanted to achieve its ambitions within a 12-month project timeline. With Engine selected as Salt’s core banking provider, the goal was to deliver a cloud-native platform that would allow the bank to launch its new digital proposition and customer experience. We worked closely with Salt’s team of in-house experts from the discovery stage of the project right through to delivery. We localised and configured the platform to meet regulatory and market requirements, while employing collaborative processes, such as embedding our team in Bucharest, to ensure rapid and efficient product testing and deployment, real-time decision making and effective planning across each phase of the project.

At launch in April 2024, Salt offered transaction accounts in local and 16 foreign currencies for retail customers with automated digital onboarding supported by a manual review workflow in Engine for marginal cases. Customers gained access to innovative, self-serve banking features like saving spaces, spending insights, card controls, and Apple and Google Pay in-app provisioning. Salt also employed a pre-enrollment program for customers to gain early access as Founders, with 80,000 enrolled before public launch.

In partnering with Engine, Salt embraced not only our technology platform but a new operational model. Like Engine, Salt believes in balancing technology with human connection. This made it a priority to retain human touchpoints for customer service. They leveraged Engine’s content centre capability and single customer view, making 24/7 support available via real agents in a dedicated Care Centre.

From the customer experience to the back office, Salt also put the employee experience at the heart of its bank. They wanted to give their teams running operations, from financial crime and customer support to payment and card operations, along with the best possible processes and workflows to empower them in their roles and enable them to deliver exceptional service with maximum efficiency.

To achieve this, Salt used Engine’s dedicated Management Portal, which provides teams with a single view of the customer. Our platform’s pre-configured modules work in harmony across each functional area and with the mobile workflows on the customer end, meaning Salt can achieve the employee experience they want while observing operational efficiencies and cost savings.

For Salt to deliver a frictionless experience from customer to employee, it’s vital that they feel supported at all times. Engine provides a 24/7 Managed Service to Salt, which involves hosting and environment management, maintenance, incident management, and a dedicated Client Service Desk. This is in addition to regular upgrades, features and product releases.

At the very beginning of the story, Salt consulted with Kearney, a management consultancy firm, to help them clearly define the neobank market and refine their value proposition, a key element of Salt differentiating itself from existing players in the retail banking space.

A cloud-native foundation was central to Salt's vision of a future-ready digital banking platform, which prompted the selection of AWS as its infrastructure partner. Engine has extensive experience working with AWS through the development and running of Starling, and the provider’s proven ability to enhance availability and agility, enable rapid development, and maintain high security was essential for Salt’s comprehensive cloud strategy.

Salt brought in the expertise of the technology consultancy firm GFT as the key implementation partner. We partnered with their engineering and technical teams, as well as Salt’s in-house capability, to deliver the mobile banking app and the integrations needed to ensure all systems worked seamlessly.

In just 12 months, Salt proved what's possible when bold strategic vision meets the right technology partner. Salt launched successfully in 2024, and 2025 saw even greater product innovation and brand building. Learn more about the creation of the Salt Bank brand and the rapid product innovations they achieved through Engine in 2025.