Basiq has partnered with Upstreet, an app that lets customers earn shares as they shop with their favourite brands.
When it comes to investing, consumers face three main barriers: awareness, access and affordability. Upstreet helps consumers overcome all three barriers with an easy and quick way of achieving share ownership. Shoppers simply need to make a purchase with a participating brand and they will be rewarded in direct shares of that company.
In the case of unlisted companies, they can opt to reward customers with another financial product (generally an exchange traded fund, like the BetaShares Australian Sustainability Leaders ETF).
Either way, customers build fractional share ownership with every eligible purchase.
Upstreet challenges the idea that share ownership is only for those with spare money and time. The app empowers consumers to get a head start in the share market at no extra cost to them. Users don’t need disposable income or an understanding of investing to start building a portfolio that will diversify over time based on their shopping habits, assuming you shop with a range of Upstreet brands. Upstreet calls this “investing with your feet – or clicks.”
Traditionally, trading fees make investing small amounts in multiple companies or ETFs impractical. Thanks to the Upstreet Fund, there are no brokerage or management fees at all, so you can diversify your portfolio to your heart’s content just by shopping with different Upstreet brands. The Upstreet Fund is also what enables Upstreet to offer “fractional share rewards,” since a single shop may not earn a user a whole share in the participating brand, Upstreet can still reward them with ownership representing part of one share (by portioning out units in the Upstreet Fund). Every time the user shops with the same brand, their ownership keeps growing proportionately.
By combining shopping and investing, not only does Upstreet increase the accessibility of the share market, it also helps solve choice overload for consumers. Brands that partner with Upstreet can better differentiate themselves from competitors and reward customers in a more meaningful way than traditional means.
Upstreet uses Basiq so their customers can easily and securely link their spending accounts to the Upstreet app. With Basiq, Upstreet customers can connect accounts from over 100 financial institutions and earn shares whether they’re making the purchase with a bank account or non-bank account like PayPal.
Importantly, this enables Upstreet to offer “automatic” share rewards, where customers don’t have to do anything extra to redeem their shares – making the whole experience of participating (and building a share portfolio) more accessible to all shoppers than ever before. With bank linking, transactions are ‘seen’ by Upstreet as they happen; any relevant share rewards are processed by the app and added to users’ portfolios without them having to do a thing. They just get a notification to say their portfolio has grown thanks to a recent shop.
For prospective Upstreet users worried about having missed out on share rewards (e.g. if you just recently subscribed to Marley Spoon), don’t worry – Basiq also enables Upstreet to look back at transactions over the preceding two weeks to calculate and process any earned share rewards within 3-5 working days. This applies to any offers that use the bank linking feature.
For Upstreet CEO, Christian Eckelmann, the coolest thing about Upstreet is its ability to affect wider-scale change in democratising the share market.
“Upstreet allows everyone to actively participate in the economy they’re helping build. By democratising access to the share market in this manner, we are simultaneously making the everyday shopper more valuable to brands whilst also making shopping more rewarding than ever before. It’s a true win-win scenario for people and brands.”
As Upstreet welcomes more household brands and grows their user base, customers will be able to turn an even larger portion of their everyday spending into shares. The app has just gone live with a range of popular brands on board, with many more on the way.
To get started, simply download the Upstreet app on the Apple app and Google Play stores and connect your spending accounts before shopping. For more on how you can innovate with financial data, check out the Basiq website.
