Well, here’s the confirmation of this…
(Spotted on Reddit, apparently taken at an event at Westfield Stratford City)
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Why on earth would they introduce that huge writing across the face of the card?! It looked quite classy… this doesn’t 
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They want to make sure you don’t mistake your Starling card for a Monzo card I guess 
I’m guessing market research told Starling the teal wasn’t associating with Starling by the public. They have changed the logotype and the corporate typeface too since the teal cards were introduced too, and Starling is in another growth phase with the new ads, so it makes sense to me.
It’s not the most subtle of design, I agree with you, but they have finally sorted out the sole/joint confusion.
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Only just… it’s still two shades of the same colour. I love the dark navy business card. Perhaps they could have introduced a completely different third colour?
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Either that or gone for a different take on their standard design, as Starling Kite has.
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Call me crazy but maybe they could have made it…
…purple?
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Sorry to be the King of negativity here, but if we’re honest, why do we need snazzy brightly coloured cards at all? I mean, it’s all BS really isn’t it? It’s just a card, a piece of plastic that lives in the wallet that gets taken out to tap and go.
Mine don’t even live in the wallet 
We (well I do, but most people) don’t need it, brands do. For recognition and awareness purposes
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To my mind, a Starling account holder with several accounts should be able to tell their different cards apart at a glance.
This is true for personal and business, but not their other cards.
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Can somebody post the image for those of us who don’t have Facebook/Instagram, please?
I’m mildly surprised that they’ve decided to go portrait, but less surprised that they’ve moved numbers to the back.
I hope Child & Co get to keep a special card design and, hopefully, something similar to what we have now.
I’m really not sure what’s going on with that NatWest card - really not a good design in my opinion, but perhaps it will grow on me!
Also, I wonder if they have moved the Mastercard logo to the back (like Chase) or whether these are just dodgy renders that have left it off?
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Is it just me that thinks the proposed new NatWest design looks like a kid’s account card?
A real downgrade imo (and I wasn’t a fan of the original!).
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I find the RBS one odd. When a bank chooses to go with a photo card design they run the risk that it’ll end up looking pretty naff. I don’t think Bank of Scotland have done badly with theirs, since they use distinctive Scottish imagery and landmarks (Falkirk Wheel, SECC Armadillo etc).
But what’s the relevance of the beach but with RBS? It’s like they’ve just nabbed some generic stock photo and stuck it on their card. It feels like a total lack of brand identity.
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Yes, it’s not just you!
It gives off Starling Kite-esque, quirky, fun “kid’s design” vibes to me too.
I do also agree with your thoughts on RBS, but at least that is a fairly inoffensive and nice design. I also like how they’ve subtly put the RBS daisywheel in the corner.
RBS still has major branding issues, partly due to a wider Group desire to distance itself as much as possible from the Fred Goodwin era. The latest policy seems to be to verbally refer to RBS as “the Royal Bank” (in Scottish TV adverts, etc) and to always write out “Royal Bank of Scotland” in full and absolutely never, ever, use “RBS”. Even the iOS app is now titled “Royal Bank” when it used to be called RBS.
This leaves them in a bit of a difficult situation as there is even a slight reticence to use the long-form “Royal Bank of Scotland” on branding if it can be avoided. So they seem to have decided against any written branding on the card.
The random stock photo imagery is also fairly consistent with their recent branding (leaflets, emails, even that awful iOS splash screen that they rowed back from) and I imagine it was chosen precisely because of it’s blandness and completely inoffensive nature. Also, I hate to say this, but the NatWest “kid’s toy box” style reminds me of Bó a bit - so I’m disappointed but not entirely surprised with that direction either.
Basically, NatWest is being pushed forward more and more as a primary brand, Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland is in a kind of maintenance mode, with it now legally part of NatWest to reduce costs but a full rebrand and absorption into NatWest unlikely due to local politics, and “Royal Bank” is in a kind of purgatory until the general public has forgotten about the financial crisis. So we have a bit of a mess, branding wise, but also probably what we could broadly have expected.
I will be interested to see how the Ulster Bank NI card turns out, as it will presumably be a different design to RBS (but they may even just use stock photos there as well).
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Slightly prefer the new NatWest to the old. Brings some more colour.
Will these be the new MasterCard debits?
Yes, we think so.