The sassiest fintech ever

Imagine you got a financially saving, cool and funny best friend in your pocket. Meet Cleo.* A fintech just for Gen Zs.

Who dreamt it up?

Cleo was the brainchild of a founder Barnaby Hussey Yeo started in 2016, a data scientist who self reportedly was terrible with money. He previously used to work at Wonga which was under a lot of its criticism for its predatory lending practices, and noticed a vast majority of customers were spending more than they earned, (broke hustle vibes ifyk.)

With countless iteration, he and his cofounder at the time, Alexandria Wozniak, armed with this innovative idea, unyielding determination; in 2017, they both raised $700,000 in funding from a series of legendary angel investors most notably; Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom, Zoopla co-founder, Alex Chesterman and so on.

So what’s the biggie?

Cleo is money management app, which has an AI assistant who can either be a class A a hole or hype queen.

It comes with a wide array of budgeting and saving tools to help you reach your goals faster.

Cleo has two tiers of a premium subscription service: Cleo Builder and Cleo Plus.

A Cleo Credit Builder subscription, for $14.99 a month ($9.99 a month, a savings of about 33% if you are a student), is a way for beginners to build credit without debt. It comes with no interest or credit checks. It offers two days of early access to paychecks and has a higher limit of a cash advance up to $500 if a direct deposit is set up. If not, the user gets $270. It does not require proof of employment.

It also comes with the option to view your credit score on a daily basis.

The direct deposit and card security deposits are protected by $250,000 FDIC insurance, and Cleo uses Plaid to securely connect bank accounts to the app.

*Trevor the Finance Bro is entered the chat*:

"This huge emphasis on a customer-centric focus towards the Gen Z community, has allowed the company to keep its unit economics low and scaled exponentially. It has raised 137.39 million  in funding over 10 rounds, giving it a whopping $500 million valuation as of July 2022. It has over a 100% year-on-year and $50 million annual recurring revenue, as of 2023.”

Sooo give Cleo a try here!

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* I am not affiliated with this company in any way or sponsored. I am just a proud user and love the Gen Z focus on the user experience of the product and its meme worthy financial content.