Emoji app makes money managing easy for millennials

Penny is a chat-based money management app that uses easy-to-understand graphs and emojis to help users save and spend better.

Saving money can be a difficult task, and a number of innovations are trying to make it easier, from a platform that auto-saves small amounts of money to an app that gets the best exchange rates. Now, here to answer budget-related questions and help users spend smarter is Penny, a free money management app that provides personalized financial advice.

Available for both iOS and Android, Penny uses graphs and emojis for a quick visual overviews, providing month comparison reports, expenditure breakdowns, information on any subscriptions, and more. Each time the app is opened, it provides updates on recent activity, sends reminders about forthcoming bills and gives suggestions for ways to save. The machine learning app will improve as it learns more about each user’s spending habits and preferences.

Penny uses bank-grade security to keep personal information safe and does not store login details. Pre-populated messages take the guesswork out of chats, enabling users to quickly ask and answer questions. Currently only available for use with PayPal accounts and banks based in the United States, the founders plan to expand and are already considering Canadian and Australian versions. The startup plans to use the USD 1.2 million of seed funding to explore monetizing parts of the app and continue developing the app’s machine learning capabilities.

Are these functionalities something banks should integrate into their existing frameworks?