Chase Has a New Banking App Called Finn

To continue today’s “happiness” theme, let’s look at Finn by Chase, a brand-new app that… well, I’ll just quote the press release:

Chase today unveiled Finn by Chase℠, a new all-mobile bank that gives consumers greater control of their everyday spending and saving – and happiness – through a completely mobile experience.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been doing mobile banking for years, and my Capital One 360 account (formerly ING Direct) was advertising itself as a totally online, no brick-and-mortar bank back in the early 2000s.

But I can access my Capital One 360 account via browser, so… I will reluctantly admit that an all-mobile bank is technically a fresh idea.

The mobile aspect isn’t the freshest part of Finn by Chase, though. (Also, have we all figured out that Finn is short for Financial? Good.) It’s the part where Finn wants you to rate every purchase.

Here’s how Finn explains it:

Let’s say you’re rating some things you bought: a record, a pair of headphones, a ukulele, and bag of frozen peas…

And you see in your trends that all those purchases on music make you happy and those peas not so much.

So you set an autosave rule to save every time you spend on music. Now, when a show pops up, you’re good to go.

First of all: YOU NEED PEAS TO LIVE. Or… food. You need to buy food. (I know that many of us feel guilty or resentful about spending “too much” money on food, it comes up all the time in Doing Money interviews, but we have to eat.)

Second of all: Finn doesn’t want you to save for the future. Finn wants you to spend that money you saved on that show that just popped up. I’m sure there’s a way to not spend your Finn savings, but that is not what Finn is nudging you to do here.

Third of all: You are telling Finn exactly how much you value each purchase. I wonder what Finn is doing with that information.

Fourth of all… well, I’ll quote the Finn website one more time:

[…] for a limited time with your early access, Finn won’t charge you any fees.

Anyone want to sign up?

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