Up’s next gen banking
Within a day of UP’s API launch, the neobank’s customers were already trialling a number of “crazy” ideas but importantly, the initiative helped boost financial engagement and literacy.
Up launched its beta release of the Up API in July.
According to Up co-founder Dom Pym, within five minutes – “no word of a lie” – its customers were tweeting about the “little simple apps” that they had built on top of the neobank’s API.
Pym cites a number of app examples including simple initiatives such as a quick view of their account balances.
“Within the next 20 minutes a customer had a build a dashboard that showed their app transactions and their merchant transactions within a web browser.”
Pym speaks of another customer developed an ‘automated sprinkler’ that donates money to charity. Here, money would be sent to an Up account that was routed to a special savings account which can be donated to their charity/organization of choice.
This sprinkler app would be prompted to push illustrations of ‘rain’ or ‘a bucket of water’ depending on the level of donations.
“This is all automated and magically happening through our API.”
Pym adds that while it is a “little gimmicky,” any offering that helps financial literacy and engagement is important.
To read more, please click on the link below…
