BUSINESS NEWS - The introduction of the smart phone a decade ago has changed many things. It’s changed the way you find things in the dark; it’s changed the way you wake up; it’s changed the way you communicate; it may even have changed the amount of time you spend in the loo. What it hasn’t changed, however, is investing.
Opening a new investment remains a complex forms-based process, requiring among other things multiple ID verification.
“It’s not hard to see why young people don’t invest,” says Juan Labuschagne, an actuary with long-term insurer Liberty and head of development at Stash. “Look at these forms – they are a barrier – and that’s before you start selecting from one of 50 unit trust options.”
What if you could pay for your cappuccino using a credit, debit or cheque card and automatically the balance – rounded up to the nearest R10, R20 or R50 – was invested in the JSE’s top 100 companies?
Liberty has developed an app, called Stash – as in stash your cash – that enables savers to do exactly that.
Users decide how much they want to stash. The app rounds up the amount of every transaction. If a user decides that their Stash limit per transaction is R10 and they make a transaction for R45, this would be rounded up to R50. The R5 in change is stashed.
