From helping new parents budget better to educating children about money, FinTech entrepreneurs are doing their part to make life easier for families.
FinTech startups around the world are often set up to make it easier for people to manage both money and their close relationships.
If you find splitting the bill with friends after a dinner a headache-triggering experience, challenger banks like Revolut and N26 offer clever solutions to help, as does several startups.
If you wish to transfer money across borders to your family, then there is no shortage of companies who are willing to lend you a hand.
However, some FinTech ventures take it one step further and focus entirely on improving the lives of families.
Here are five you should know about.
StorkCard
Andres Korin and Bruce Pannaman launched StorkCard in October 2019. The startup is devoted to helping new parents better budget their lives when they have a new child, which is not always easy.
That was something Korin had to learn the hard way when he became a dad. “The biggest shock for us was how expensive early childcare was,” Korin told FinTech Global in an intimate interview around the launch. “On a purely financial level, both of us returning to work full-time just wasn’t worth it. We made ends meet by switching to a part-time schedule and using our savings.”
Wiser from the experience, he set out to do something about it. The result of these efforts was StorkCard.
“StorkCard was born out of the idea that there’s a financial product for most life stages, such as a mortgage for buying a house, a pension for retiring or a student loan for going to university, but there’s nothing for having a child,” Korin. “The cost is easily on par with some of these other milestones.”
PCKT Money
Children do not always understand the value of money. That can be especially difficult as societies move towards becoming less reliant on physical money.
PCKT Money is set up to counter the effect and ensure kids and teens are prepared to deal with finances when they grow up.
Founded by Jaakko Rytsölä, the Finnish company hopes to boost financial literacy through an app and a debit card featuring the characters from the video game Angry Birds for children to use.
In November 2019, it tapped payment company Nets to provide its card processing and API services.
Winnie
Finding someone to care for your child is not always easy. That’s where Winnie comes in.
Former Google-employees Sara Mauskopf and Anne Halsall launched the childcare marketplace empowering parents to find suitable and local daycare for their tots.
By aggregating data from 20 US state licensing authorities, parents can make their pick among over 150,000 daycares and preschools.
The efforts paid off in October when Winnie announced the closure of a $9m in a new Series A funding round led by Rethink Impact, a venture capital firm investing in female-led enterprises.
VC firms Reach Capital, Impact America Fund, Unusual Ventures, Ludlow Ventures and Afore Capital also participated in the round.
Greenlight Financial Technology
Like PCKT Money, Greenlight Financial Technology is set up to help parents raise financially savvy children.
Launched in 2017, the scaleup issues debit cards for children. The twist is that the parents can manage how the kids use their money through a mobile app. This means that parents can pick the stores their kids can shop in, manage their chores and allowances and a slew of other services. The app also allows the children to check and control their balances better.
It’s no wonder the company has managed to impress both the public and investors since.
In fact, it bagged $54m in a Series B round in September 2019. The round was led by Drive Capital with contributions also coming from JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Previous backers of Greenlight TTV Capital, Live Oak Bank, and Relay Ventures, also contributed to the round.
Pigzbe
Pigzbe also wants to help educate children about proper money use. However, instead of cards, it pairs a physical game controller to its digital wallet app and gamifies the experience of earning, saving and spending cash.
Whenever parents send their kids money, it will be transferred into Wollos, the company’s own cryptocurrency. The children can then earn the money, the Wollos, by doing chores like walking the dog or doing the dishes.
The London-based digital wallet platform Pigzbe closed $8.85m initial coin offering in November 2018.
Copyright © 2019 FinTech Global
