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Will Smith Wants To Help The Next Generation With Financial Education
In a digitally savvy world, fewer people are carrying cash and using credit cards and even their phones to make payments and purchases. While this is an easier and quicker solution to making financial transactions, a lot of the time, people can’t keep track of how much money is flowing in and out. That’s where one company is working to alleviate that issue and teach the new generation the importance of financial literacy.
An app called Step just got a major new investor and his name is a famous Hollywood actor Will Smith. The app is a mobile-based banking system specifically designed for teenagers, allowing them to easily and safely send and receive money from their family and friends and get real-time notifications. The app will also help teens by eliminating the stress of having to worry and deal with monthly or overdraft fees and no minimum balance that traditional banking customers incur.
The platform’s lead investor is Stripe, but other investors include Nas, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Wndrco, Ronnie Lott, Matt Rutler, Kevin Gould, and Moat founders Noah and Jonah Goodhart. The purpose of creating such an app that targets teens is to help them with financial literacy.
“Schools don’t teach kids about money,” CJ MacDonald, the CEO, and co-founder said in an interview with TechCrunch. “We want to be their first bank accounts with spending cards, but we also want to teach financial literacy and responsibility.”
MacDonald hopes that with this app, teenagers will learn to be more responsible with money in the cashless era. With the funding, Step will bring about banking accounts with payment cards attached, which will be done in partnership with Mastercard and Evolve.
Currently, there is a waitlist of over 500,000 potential users to access the product.
By: Maytinee Kramer
