This program has been so successful that there has been an estimated more than a 50% lift in transactions for Acorns customers on average. (See 4 Reasons Why the End Is Near For Wealthfront) The app most recently paired up with Airbnb. ProgramsĪcorns launched the “Found Money” partnership program in May 2016, in which they’ve successfully merged retail shopping and investing: users can get bonus investment cash by using services that have partnered with Acorns, like Blue Apron and Jet.com. The portfolios are comprised exclusively of ETFs from the likes of Blackrock and Vanguard, and your roundups are automatically invested for you. Users can accept the recommended portfolio or select their own. After it calculates your risk tolerance by asking you questions about your age, time horizon, income, goals, etc., the app recommends one of six portfolios, which range from Conservative to Aggressive. The wide-reaching appeal of Acorns stems from the fact that users, once they’ve set up an account, don’t have to do anything. It now also has a desktop site, which was a new addition to the last update. Lawnmower is an app that is actually modeled after Acorns, but instead of ETFs, is invests the user’s roundups in Bitcoin – very risky.)Īcorns syncs with iPhone and Apple Watch, as well as Android and Android Wear. It has gained a small-but-vocal band of followers who regularly share their savings success stories on outlets like Twitter. One is the savings app Digit, which uses a similar withdrawal method in order to squirrel user’s money away in an online savings account. However, there are a number of other apps that also use this hook. (Every successful app has a unique differentiator that sets it apart from other apps in the same category. However, Stash offers more flexibility, particularly in the ETFs users are given access to, making it attractive for investors who want more control. Stash, unlike Acorns, is one, but it does not automatically pull money from an account the user has to be the one to set up a transfer. There are few apps that deal in such small investments. By enabling users to set up and forget about an investment account, they encourage people who may never would have invested otherwise to start. Once you link an account, all of your purchases are automatically “rounded up” to the next dollar, and the spare change is invested in a pre-defined basket of ETFs.įor instance, if you buy a cup of coffee for $2.50 using your credit or debit card, the app rounds it up to $3.00, and then it invests the leftover $0.50 for you automatically.Īcorns’ slogan, “Investing for everyone,” is fitting, considering their goal is to appeal to non-investors. (See Why Acorns is the Only Roboadvisor That Could Be Worth $1 Billion)Īcorns users can invest their spare change through the app’s automated system. Its functioning has a wide appeal for first-time investors – especially those averse to spending any time on the investing part. Acorns: Product OverviewĪcorns, which is by far the most popular, is like a “ spare change” roboadvisor. Let’s take a look at how the two micro-savings apps compare. But Stash is making headway with their customizable approach to building a nest egg. (See 3 Reasons to Avoid the Pennies for Apple Watch Budgeting App)īut which is here to stay? Acorns has gained an impressive user base, especially when compared to name brand roboadvisors like Betterment and Wealthfront, who’ve spent millions on advertising. Both apps fall into a category known as “micro-savings”: enabling users to save small increments at a time, perhaps even less than $1.00.Ī quick search shows a plethora of savings-related apps available on smartphones and wearables – though some are clearly better than others. There has been some out-of-the-box thinking in the development of two apps: Acorns and Stash. Yet their technology solutions take wildly divergent paths to the same goal.Ī number of startups have launched with the goal of helping Millennials & Centennials become comfortable with investing. The social media has seen hundreds of startups including recent popular apps such as Viber (voice calls), Periscope (video streaming) and Snapchat (disappearing photos that has filed for an IPO at a valuation of $25 billion), whose founders all wanted to facilitate the creation of virtual communities. One of the amazing aspects of innovation is how different people can approach the exact same problem from completely different angles.
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