Plum, an AI-powered personal finance management chatbot, has scored $3m in funding to support European expansion.
Alongside the funding, the company is launching an Android app so it can reach more savers in the UK and beyond.
The capital injection adds to the $4.5m it secured from VentureFriends and the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) earlier in the year. Lendinvest’s founder and CEO Christian Faes also contributed to the funding.
This investment comes after a strong year of growth for the startup. With offices in London and Athens, the company now has a team of 31 – the Athens office has tripled in size since April.
Plum leverages AI and behavioural analysis to help consumers better manage their money, improve savings and make smarter finance choices.
The chatbot calculates the perfect saving amount and automatically sets this aside every couple of days. This money can then be invested into themed funds. Plum’s aim is to make a user £186,000 over their lifetime.
In tandem with the funding round, Plum has released the Android app for its services. The company initially released its platform on iOS in April 2019.
Plum is now available through Facebook Messenger, iOS and Android.
With this release, the company is looking to expand its reach beyond the UK into Europe, citing strong numbers of consumers using Androids across the region.
Plum CEO and co-founder Victor Trokoudes said, “Our plans to bring Plum’s magic to even more people across Europe are well underway, with our iOS and Android apps. Until now we have been focused on the UK but the Brits are not the only people who are struggling to save and grow their money. Our sights are firmly set on Europe; in Spain, for example, a quarter of the population don’t have any savings at all.
We plan to help these people by investing heavily in our product to make it as useful as possible. We have hired a behavioural scientist to ensure that the new features we’re building are trail-blazing and informed by actual human behaviour rather than industry assumptions.”
Plum recently released two saving rules. The first is the 52-week challenge which helps a consumer save £1,367 a year, and the second is the rainy-day rule which puts money aside whenever it rains.
The company has raised a total of $9.3m in funding.
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