Fintech startup Grifin, which launched in 2017, has a novel solution when it comes to investing — it aligns where you shop with where you invest.
Grifin routinely pulls $1 from a user’s checking account each time they make a purchase order at a publicly traded company, after which routinely invests that dollar back into the company for the user. For instance, if a Grifin user went to Starbucks and acquired a chilly brew, the Grifin app would withdraw $1 with the purchase and provides the user $1 of SBUX stock.
The corporate released a latest adaptive investing model on Thursday that makes its services more flexible, from the ability to pause automatic payments, to disabling investments at certain corporations where users shop. The user may now manually increase or decrease how much they need to spend on investments, from $1 up to $99 per transaction.
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“By investing in small amounts, as little as $1 at a time, the aim is to help people to learn to navigate the world of investing without incurring too many negative consequences in the event that they do not get it right,” Grifin co-founder Aaron Froug told TechCrunch.
Grifin was created to democratize investing and help people understand their spending habits, Froug said. Having a positive relationship with money will be “an incredibly difficult thing to do and achieve,” he told the outlet.
Here’s How It Works
I tried out the Grifin app with the latest adaptive investing model, and I found it easy to onboard and use the service.
Screenshots from the app. The primary shows the steps needed to create a Grifin account, the second highlights that the app asks for private information, like SSN and residential address, and the third shows how the app identifies corporations to spend money on.
To create an account, I had to enter personally identifiable information, corresponding to my social security number and my home address. I also had to connect a checking account to the app, and every other credit or debit cards that I used in order that Grifin could track my transactions.
While I wasn’t thrilled about giving out all of my personal information, it was surprisingly easy to grow to be an investor. It took lower than 10 minutes to get every little thing connected and prepared to go.
Inside seconds, Grifin had already pulled the 4 places I shopped at in the past week, past two weeks, and past month.
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The app is solely laid out and the adaptive investing model gives me more confidence as a user because if I don’t desire to spend money on a selected company, but I want to buy something from it, I can try this. The $1 investment per transaction model reframes spending selections because the app makes spending less about consumption and more about investing money and time into businesses.
Grifin has an app redesign and an AI chatbot in the works according to TechCrunch.
As for me, I intend to keep using this app. The financial stakes are low enough that anyone can try it.