TechRadiant ranks the top digital banking and neobank development companies in 2026, evaluated on banks they have actually launched, core banking and BaaS integration depth, security and compliance, speed to launch, and measured customer outcomes after go-live.
A digital bank is judged in its first month: how fast customers can open an account, whether the app stays up, and whether the team can keep shipping. The firms below have delivered banks that reached 100,000 customers in ten days, cut onboarding from 24 days to 20 minutes, and rebuilt banking apps for some of the best-known names in finance.
How TechRadiant ranks digital banking development companies: Each company is scored on five criteria, banking domain depth, security and compliance, core and BaaS integrations, launch speed, and client outcomes, using named bank launches, published results, core platform partnerships and certifications. Facts are taken from each company's own case studies, announcements and official pages, verified in October 2026. Scores are TechRadiant's editorial assessment. Rankings reviewed quarterly.
The licence route decides how much of the bank you have to build and run yourself. Choose it before you choose a development partner, because it changes what that partner needs to have done before.
Every neobank and digital banking launch needs these six pieces. Use them to check whether a partner has real experience across the whole bank or only the app on top.
GFT has the strongest recent neobank launch in this report. It led technical delivery of Salt Bank in Romania on Engine by Starling, adapting the core for a new market, building a bespoke AWS cloud platform and the mobile app, and integrating more than 30 services. Salt launched in April 2024, about a year after kick-off, reached 100,000 customers in ten days and passed 500,000 within a year, with account opening under seven minutes and 99.99% uptime across 400+ app updates. It won a 2025 Celent Model Bank Award. GFT has partnered with Thought Machine since 2020 and helped launch the first cloud-native neobank in Asia.
Thoughtworks brings engineering discipline to digital banks that need to scale. With DKatalis, the technology company behind Indonesia's Bank Jago, it built a transaction orchestration layer between the bank's services and its core banking system, delivering 300% faster performance in production. The rollout ran in parallel on live traffic, then moved from a 1% canary release to full traffic, a careful approach that matters for a bank serving millions of customers. For TBC Bank, Georgia's leading financial institution, it helped cut time-to-market by 60%. Its banking client roster also includes Judo Bank, ING, Standard Chartered and Bancolombia.
Globant has worked with Openbank, Grupo Santander's digital bank, since 2016, and it is one of the best-documented digital bank transformations available. Globant helped deliver a fully digital bank in nine months, with two web platforms, four native mobile apps and a content management system, and more than 450 Globant engineers contributed across 10+ projects. Account onboarding fell from 24 days of paperwork to a 20-minute digital process. Globant added machine learning personalisation, AI-based fraud detection and biometric login, and digitised mortgages. Openbank passed 1.5 million clients in 2020, double the year before, with mortgage acquisition up 134%.
DashDevs builds banking products end to end and has launched more than 100 fintech products since 2011. Its digital banking work includes one of the UK's first challenger banks and a compliance-first digital bank in Saudi Arabia, alongside Tarabut, MENA's first regulated open banking platform, and Chip, the savings app with 400,000+ monthly users. Its main accelerator, Fintech Core, provides a configurable layer for customers, accounts, payments, vendors, controls and reporting, and the company says products typically reach production in about 12 weeks on it. That makes DashDevs one of the fastest routes to launch in this report, particularly for UK and Gulf neobanks.
Comarch combines its own banking software with large-scale implementation teams, which suits incumbent banks digitising their channels rather than startups launching from scratch. It has more than 25 years of experience in finance, banking and insurance, and its corporate banking software serves more than 2.5 million corporate clients worldwide. Named bank clients include BNP Paribas Fortis and ING, and it is implementing the Comarch Open Platform omnichannel banking system for BRD Groupe Société Générale, Romania's third-largest bank, with digital corporate loan origination as the first added service. Earlier, it delivered internet banking for Rabobank in Poland. Comarch operates 80+ offices in more than 30 countries.
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Netguru is the most design-led firm in this report and has delivered more than 2,500 projects over 18+ years. For UBS it redesigned the mobile banking app around a mobile-first approach, making payment flows more consistent and shortening login. For a European automobile club it built a credit card program on the Solaris banking-as-a-service platform, and it has supplied senior engineers to FairMoney across mobile lending, banking and KYC systems. It also rebuilt the app for Mexican fintech Swap. Its finance clients include Klarna, Spendesk and Nedbank. It suits brands launching banking features on BaaS, and banks whose customer experience needs to compete with leading neobanks.
Kindgeek has worked only on fintech for more than 11 years and offers a white-label neobank alongside custom builds, which lets clients start from a working banking product rather than a blank page. Its white-label modules cover neobanking, core banking, payments, cards and personal finance management, and it holds ISO 27001:2023 and ISO 9001:2015 certification while building to PCI DSS, GDPR and PSD3 requirements. For Jaja Finance in the UK it built a banking app with a digital credit card and simple credit management. It has delivered more than 100 regulated projects, and 70% of its clients arrive through referrals, with partnerships lasting two years on average.
Django Stars has built software since 2008 and is ISO/IEC 27001 certified, which gives banks a clear security baseline before procurement starts. Its digital banking work includes SAIB, the Saudi bank with more than 60 branches across the Kingdom. Its wider lending portfolio is strong: for MoneyPark it built the platform behind CHF 3.4 billion in annual Swiss mortgage volume, and for UK digital lender Molo Finance it supported a platform that took £600 million in mortgage applications in 2021. Its services span banking API and KYC integrations, customer portals, legacy modernization and fintech UI/UX, delivered with a Python-first engineering culture.
#9✓ VERIFIEDMiquido is a Kraków studio with 15+ years of delivery and more than 250 digital products shipped, and its strength is mobile banking experiences that customers rate highly. Its banking and insurance roster includes mBank, BNP Paribas, SBAB, PZU and Aviva. Its standout fintech build is Nextbank, an AI credit-scoring platform that has processed more than 500 million loan applications at 97% prediction accuracy, useful for digital banks that want lending decisions inside the app. Miquido is one of the most decorated design studios in this report, with a 2023 Webby for Best Visual Design. Its site lists no security certifications, so ask for ISO or SOC 2 status.
Velmie provides a digital banking platform and acts as a systems integrator, delivering core banking technology, back-office systems, mobile and web apps, and integrations with card, payment, compliance and banking providers, plus post-launch support. In August 2026 it added multivendor capabilities, letting institutions manage several card processors, payment networks and banking partners through one integration and administration layer, either as their main banking platform or on top of existing systems. For US investment company ResClub it launched the 8ghtX app, a banking and investment platform built on Velmie's core with Angular and Flutter front ends. Velmie is ISO 27001 certified.
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Answers to the questions banks, fintechs and brands ask most often when planning a digital bank launch in 2026.
It depends mostly on the licence route and how much you reuse. Launching on a banking-as-a-service partner with an existing platform can take months. Building a fully licensed bank takes longer, because the core, compliance and regulatory approvals all sit with you.
Recent examples give a useful benchmark. Salt Bank in Romania launched about a year after kick-off, with GFT leading delivery on Engine by Starling. Globant helped Openbank deliver a fully digital bank in nine months. DashDevs says products built on its Fintech Core typically reach production in about 12 weeks.
Regulatory approval and partner-bank due diligence often set the real launch date, so plan for them from day one.
No. Many neobanks launch on a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) partner, a licensed bank or provider that holds deposits and carries much of the regulatory responsibility, while the neobank builds the app, onboarding and customer experience. Netguru's credit card program on the Solaris BaaS platform is one example.
Your own licence gives full control of products, pricing and data, but you must build and run the regulated bank yourself, including the core, compliance and reporting.
The right choice depends on how much control you need and how long you can wait. Decide it before choosing a development partner, because it changes the experience that partner needs.
Most new digital banks now choose a cloud-native core banking platform and configure it, rather than building a ledger from scratch. Common choices include Thought Machine, Mambu and Engine by Starling, which powers Starling Bank in the UK and Salt Bank in Romania.
The best fit depends on your products, markets and team. Configurability, regulatory track record in your country, ecosystem of integrations and running cost all matter.
Choose a development partner with live launches on the core you are considering. GFT, for example, has partnered with Thought Machine since 2020 and launched Salt on Engine by Starling.
Minutes, not days. Salt Bank averages under seven minutes to open an account using document and face recognition, and Openbank cut its onboarding from 24 days of paperwork to about 20 minutes with Globant.
Fast onboarding still has to satisfy KYC and anti-money laundering rules, so the work is in combining identity verification, sanctions screening and risk checks into a flow that feels simple.
Ask any partner for completion and drop-off rates on onboarding flows they have built, not just the design.
A neobank starts fresh, usually on a cloud-native core with no legacy systems, which allows a fast launch and a modern architecture.
Digitising an existing bank means building new channels and products on top of, or alongside, systems that already hold customers and money. It is slower and riskier, because the old and new systems must stay in sync. Thoughtworks' work with Bank Jago, for example, used parallel running on live traffic and a gradual 1% canary release.
Many incumbents now take a middle path, launching a separate digital brand on a new core, as Salt Bank did in Romania.
Strong digital banks release frequently without outages. Salt Bank shipped more than 400 app updates while maintaining 99.99% uptime in its first year.
That depends on automated testing, gradual rollouts, monitoring and the ability to roll back quickly. Ask partners how they release changes to live banks, and what their rollback process looks like.
A bank that cannot release safely soon stops improving, which is why release practices matter as much as the initial launch.
Plan the handover from the start. On Salt Bank, GFT helped recruit and train around 50 Salt specialists to run the platform, with the goal of the bank becoming self-sufficient.
Agree in the contract who owns the code and configuration, how knowledge will be documented, and how your own team will take over operations step by step.
If a partner uses its own accelerator or platform, as DashDevs, Kindgeek and Velmie do, confirm licence terms and what happens if you later move to another provider.
These six questions separate genuine bank builders from app agencies:
The answers usually narrow a long list to two or three serious candidates.
Human-verified rankings across AI, development, and marketing — updated quarterly.
