Featured FinTech
FinTech, or Financial Technology, refers to the innovative use of technology to streamline financial activities including lending, investing, making payments, and more, and it has revolutionized the way our society interacts with money. Even if you don’t care for all the fancy smart phone apps, think about how ATMs replaced bank tellers, or how credit cards eased the burden of carrying cash – that’s FinTech! With an abundance of technologies available these days, we’d like to share with you one of the FinTech products that is catching our eye these days, and highlight it in this space we’re calling Featured FinTech.
We hope you enjoy these examples and as always, we’d love to hear from you – what apps, websites, and products are on your must-use list? Let us know by leaving a comment below or emailing Mila@YeBu.com, and you may see your suggestion featured here soon!
BusyKid:
Chores & Allowance Simplified
- What is BusyKid?
- BusyKid is a mobile app that facilitates the electronic exchange of money between parents and kids for completed chores. The app allows parents to add chores to their child’s list, assign a chore value to each activity, and facilitate the exchange of money for a job well done. As the child accrues money for their completed chores, the app provides them with four options for spending their money: Cash Out, Gift Cards, Stock, or the “BusyKid Visa® prepaid spend card”. Parents still have approval power related the child’s allowance and spending as transactions must first be approved by the parent. This approval can be as simple as answering “yes” to a BusyKid text message.
- How did BusyKid come into existence?
- BusyKid first emerged in 2011 when a father of six was looking for a way to track his kids’ chores, pay them a weekly allowance, and teach them basic financial literacy skills. From this need, he created My Job Chart, which has since evolved into BusyKid to include additional security, technology, and features.
- What do we like about BusyKid?
- BusyKid teaches kids the imperative financial literacy skills we at Yeske Buie also promote with our Financial Literacy Program – save, spend, donate, and invest. And, we feel it does so in an interactive and “cool” way via a smartphone app.
- The electronic exchange of money is the reality of today’s financial landscape, and BusyKid introduces this reality to kids early on. Terms like direct deposit, move money, and credit are introduced in the app at a much earlier stage than would typically be relevant.