Kroo is the UK challenger bank that competed on the one thing the others treated as an afterthought: paying interest on the money sitting in your current account. Founded in 2016 and granted its full banking licence in 2022, it launched a current account paying a headline rate — 4.35% at its peak during the cost-of-living squeeze — at a moment when the big four UK banks were earning record profits on non-interest-bearing balances. A Martin Lewis recommendation in early 2023 briefly overwhelmed its onboarding systems. Deposits passed £1 billion by November 2024, less than two years after launch, with over £51 million paid back to customers in interest.
The positioning goes further than rates. Kroo is a certified B Corp structured as a public benefit corporation, with social and environmental performance legally part of how it is assessed — an unusual constitution for a licensed bank. The product set has broadened from the free current account with fee-free foreign spending into a flexible cash ISA and personal loans, and the app's distinguishing feature remains its social layer: bill splitting and shared expense tracking built into the account rather than bolted on. Deposits are FSCS-protected, and the bank is authorised by the PRA and regulated by both the PRA and FCA.
The open question is the one that hangs over every rate-led challenger. Kroo's management projected profitability by 2025 — faster, they argued, than any UK bank with a current account had achieved — but the last published figures show a £19.2 million loss on £975 million of assets for 2024 with 238 staff, and the headline rate has since fallen to 2.65% as the Bank of England has cut. A bank that acquires customers with the best rate in the market faces a hard question when it can no longer offer it: whether the social features, the B Corp identity and the app experience are enough to keep depositors who arrived for the yield. Kroo is a genuinely differentiated proposition — and the next two years will show whether differentiation converts into durable primary-account relationships.