Name: Digit Will Completely Automate Your Savings Account
Uploaded: 2016-10-12
Duration: 3 min 45 s
Description: CEO Ethan Bloch explains

[ SOUND ] First question. How does Digit work? So Digit's a service that completely automates your savings for you. You sign up and connect your existing checking account and then you go back Living your life and ideally every single day Digit will check in and try to find the perfect amount of money [ UNKNOWN ]. And it takes a little bit of out of the time, right? Right. Yeah, it definitely depends on the person and how much extra money they have and how much they spend, how much they make, but it takes in small chunks. How much money have you guys saved the customer so far? We saved a little over a quarter billion dollars now. All right, second question, how does Digit make money? So today Digit makes a small amount of money on the savings we hold on behalf of customers. In this interest rate environment, which is probably no surprise. We make a tiny amount. And so it's not necessarily a business and as we continue to build the product our goal is to probably charge for premium services that we offer. Digit has gotten a little push back over the fact that customers don't earn interest on their savings. Do you guys plan to change that at any point? We can't pay interest because we're not a bank. And then what we've done is create this thing called a savings bonus which pays around 20 basis points if you keep money in Digit. I think one of the things that's important to remember For the Digit customers, most of our customers actually will actually withdraw their savings around every 90 days, and use it to make payments on debt, to make ends meet. And some people actually move it to their IRA or to a high- yield savings account somewhere else. Got it. Next question, in what ways do you see artificial intelligence seeping into the banking industry? Yeah the thing with that is, AI, and even algorithmic trading has been in finance for a long time. But it's really been in high finance, and so what we look forward to at Digit is bringing it down to everyone. Cuz everybody has this sort of optimal answer to any financial question, it's there because it's all electronic. And how do we bring that to every single person on what you should do with this extra dollar that you have. Should it go to debt? Should you save it for bills? Where should it go? And so that's our hope I can take financial management in the future for everyone .>> In general, how do you see the Magan industry changing over the next five to ten years? I think, something we already seen is you need to build great experiences for individuals. People that have high networth and companies. They do have good access to good services. But the people that covered covered Kerry like and average daily checking bounce of $ 500 or $ 1000 they don't see great products and services built to meet their needs and now their so many of us it's changing, and companies like Digit are trying to solve that and banks are themselves trying to figure out how to meet the needs of a younger generation. Do you digital companies kind of taking over the space eventually? I mean, I think banking will more closely resemble the mobile market in the future, where the banks are more like a Verizon and AT & T. And companies like Digit are building on top of this infrastructure, and they can actually build things like Android and the Apple products. Hm, all right. and last question, you guys recently raised $ 22 million. What's next for the company? We're just heavily investing in product and today we have people that trust Digit to decide when they should save, how much they should save and then we literally move the money on their behalf. And we've done this for now almost over a quarter billion dollars. And so our big question is what more will people trust Digit to do and what are other areas in their life that we can optimize for them. What are the other areas you're going in to? So we'll probably focus on helping people make ends meet every month. It's a big challenge for many Americans, right? 40 % of this country isn't have $ 400 in the case of emergency. 40 % of the country lives paycheck to paycheck. And so we think we can Can digit can make sure you pay your bills on time. That the debts that you have that your making the right payment at the right time for the right amount based on the balance and the interest rate. And that's where we're headed.