- New AI player aims to solve UKs £350bn savings black hole*
- Plum has just raised $500k in a Seed funding round
Plum is the first AI powered Facebook Chatbot which allows consumers to start saving without any effort. The Chatbot connects to users’ current accounts and AI learns their spending habits, allowing Plum to automatically save small amounts for users every few days. Plum is the brainchild of Victor Trokoudes and Alex Michael, part of the early teams at TransferWise and Tictail respectively.
Plum is currently undergoing a few hundred trials in private BETA in the UK and will be invite-only at the end of October. It has just closed its seed funding round from 500 Startups’ microfund and a number of successful entrepreneurs, including one of the founders of One Fine Stay.
Primarily aimed at millennials, Plum is bank grade secure and able to connect to and analyse any UK current account. The smart algorithm understands spending patterns, identifies income and bills and creates a unique profile for each one of its users. Then, every few days, it will calculate a small and safe amount of money to save, which is transferred to an individual’s Plum savings account. Users can talk with the Plum on Messenger, ask it to save more money or withdraw money from their savings instantly back to their current account.
As an early employee of the international money transfer platform TransferWise, Plum co-founder Victor Trokoudes saw first-hand how fintech startups can dramatically shake up an established industry. Plum is the first start-up of its kind to address the savings problem, using intelligent algorithms to take the onus out of saving money.
“Ultimately, our aim is to enable every person in the UK to put money aside, whether that’s just enough for a rainy day, or for something substantial like a house deposit. We know that a lot of people, particularly millennials, feel either that they cannot commit to saving a specific amount, or are not motivated to do so, so we want to do it for them.”
Trokoudes went on to say: “Behavioural science tells us humans are not wired to save; instead, we actually prioritize our current desires over future goals. Plum’s intelligence sidesteps our pre-programmed human tendencies, ensuring our future selves are looked out for.”
*A report by Deloitte in September 2015 found that UK savings gap will reach £350 billion by 2050.
