Would You Let a Bot Into Your Bank Account?

What if it were a friendly bot who knew how to use emoji and hashtags?

If your phone is anything like mine, it’s probably wallpapered in financial notifications. Comcast texts me when payments are due and when my payments have posted, Mint helpfully notifies me when I’ve spent more than my monthly budgeted amount on “credit card debt repayment” (yes, Mint, that was on purpose), and both Mint and Capital One will let me know right away if my checking account balance drops below a certain amount.

But all of these notifications are, shall we say, impersonal.

A few startups are ready to change that.

These chatbots want to help you manage your money

The thinking goes something like this: A conversational interface, coupled with tech that plugs into your bank account and analyses your spending in the background, is the best way to deliver financial assistance to help you keep track of your money and actually save for a rainy day.

TechCrunch identifies three new chatbots ready to compete for your financial attention: Plum, Chip, and Cleo.

We can go ahead and guess these bots’ personalities before we even look at the apps. Plum is obviously the cool one. Her asymmetrical haircut never has a single long strand of hair flipping over to the short side. Chip is Clippy’s annoying younger cousin. He just got his MBA and is ready to mansplain. Cleo—well, these apps are all targeted towards Millennials, so we’re probably all thinking of Miss Cleo right now. RIP.

And yes, when I open up each app’s website, it’s clear that Plum is the most intriguing one, Chip is trying way too hard to get you to smile, and Cleo… has no personality. She’s the chatbot equivalent of 😐. Go see for yourself, I’ll give you a minute.

• Plum
• Get Chip – connect your current account to start saving automatically.
• Cleo, an intelligent assistant for your money

Plum and Chip work in similar ways: both bots hop into your bank account, analyze your spending history, and start pulling out small amounts of money, which they then save on your behalf—but not in your savings account, in theirs.

We’ve looked at this kind of “savings app” before:

Get Interest-free Banking With Digit, a Terrible New Way to Save

Essentially Plum and Chip are using your savings, assumedly for their own purposes, and paying you back in canned emotional labor: “I’m really happy we’re doing this together,” Plum says, and Chip hops in with “#winning.” (Yes, these are actual quotes from the apps.)

[EDIT: I should clarify that I do not know how these apps make money, and implying they make money “from your savings” is probably inappropriate. But there is money being made somewhere.]

Do you earn interest on the money Plum and Chip take from you? Yes. With Chip, your interest rate goes up the more friends you recruit to the app. Plum still has to work out the details with its banking partners, but plans to offer interest.

And Cleo? It’s hard to tell what Cleo does, although it looks like Cleo offers the same thing in the most obfuscating and corporate way possible:

Cleo, with your permission, accesses your transaction history to deliver relevant insights into your finances. You can ask Cleo questions about your spending and she’ll also pro-actively help you save if you want to.

I’m not interested in turning my savings plan over to a bot—especially one that wants to keep the money in its own account—but I should note that these apps have worked for other Billfolders:

How I Tricked Myself Into Being a Better Saver This Summer

I know some people take issue with apps like Digit and Acorns, due to either fee structure (Acorns takes out $1/month if you’ve graduated college and/or are over the age of 24) or lack of interest. My experiences with both have been positive so far; with Acorns, even after fees, I’ve earned a few bucks in dividends and my total investments are up about 5.5 percent as of mid-July. Once my balance hits more than $1,000 and I know I can comfortably deposit $100/month or more, I plan to cash out my Acorns account and put it in an ETF fund with lower potential fees.

Would you be interested in a savings bot like Plum, Chip, or Cleo? Would getting friendly messages peppered with emoji and hashtags encourage you to pay more attention to your finances? Or do you prefer to keep your savings to yourself?

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