Overview

Betterment at it's root is an investment platform. However, the business saw an opportunity to become a holistic financial management platform.

One glaring, missing piece was cash management and so Checking was launched to help people manage their investments and cash in one place.

Outcome

Full public launch in April 2020 right when pandemic started. Reached 100% of tenured customers and released to new customers.

So why checking?

There were several reasons why Betterment wanted to break into cash management:

1. People’s relationship with investing is different with cash, and being able to consolidate would allow better financial management
2. Current banking solutions are tedious and brick-n-mortar, and we saw an opportunity to provide a better online experience.

We made it easy for customers to manage their transactions with custom categorizations, date filtering, and CSV exports. We also inclduded a direct deposit form that is generated online for them to give to their employer.

Customers can also easily upload checks from their phone to deposit into their account with mobile check deposit.

We also partned with Dosh so customers can earn cashback rewards on their spending from merchants they can search for right in the app.

Customers can also create a joint checking account with their partner by simply adding them to their existing account or creating a new one. They’ll have shared and equal access to the account so they can manage their finances together.

So what’s next?

Due to NDA, I cannot go into major detail.

There will be more features and iterations coming to make the banking experience more cohesive with Betterment as a whole.

I was also featured in social ads for launch.