Bippit app fires up for all that finance jazz
London-based personal finance app Bippit has launched with the offer of an account connecting and savings service.
Put it together and what have you got? Bippit-y-boppity-boo
The company says users can track their finances and set savings goals. The app is free and gives a view of how much users can spend each day.
Bippit says it works by adding existing accounts and credit cards via open banking. As many other firms have done – this offers a financial overview in one place.
A recent example of a rival is Santander-backed Asto, which launched last month in the UK.
Other features from Bippit include analysing outstanding debts, and simple tips and advice in users’ transaction feeds.
Bippit says its platform will be Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulated. On its website the start-up is calling for sign ups.
The firm was founded by Samuel Lathey (CEO).
Lathey tells FinTech Futures that he founded the company because “it’s rooted in my desire to educate people on finance.”
Its seed funding is targeted for Q4 this year, and he says more details will be available nearer that time.
The name Bippit is not a reference to a song from Cinderella.
Lathey tells FinTech Futures that he used the term with colleagues when building an investment portfolio and checking the charges of the underlying products were not too high – e.g. ‘make sure you bippit before we send the proposal’.
It then became more widely used as slang for checking that something is good value. The word itself comes from the use of ‘bip’ as an abbreviation of basis point.
Lathey explains: “I adopted it for Bippit as it’s a short, unique, memorable word that is closely aligned to our mission of finding the best value products for our users. It’s also nice that it can be used as a verb!”
Lathey’s background is in finance and music. He has experience as an investment adviser at Quilter Cheviot; and as an investment administrator at Cheviot Asset Management. He has also been employed at UBS and for a time was a professional musician.
The latter career involved classical, jazz, and contemporary performance.
Bippit is certainly in the mood for fintech action.
