HyvesGen Z’s money app targets Gen Z and young millennials with a way to pay off debt, save and invest with the help of friends and family. The social finance app is now open to the public after a year of testing the product with hundreds of beta users.
Hyve is building a multi-player fintech infrastructure for savings and investments where users can create their network of supporters, and those people can complete their purchases automatically based on the user’s personal cash contributions. The more people add to the “hyve”, the more money the user saves to achieve his goals.
Royi Markowitz, co-founder and CEO of Hyve. Image Credits: Hyves
Social finance is by no means a new concept, think of Public.com, Frich Money, Braid, Follow and Shares. However, Royi Markowitz, co-founder and CEO, told businessupdates.org that Hyve is a hybrid between Venmo and Acorns and is differentiated from competitors by its infrastructure.
“The core is our ledger, which is the movement of money within the platform,” Markowitz said. “Turning a single-player ledger into a hybrid 3D multi-player ledger is very, very difficult, especially for a company that already has hundreds of line items in its ledger. Hyve is really the only place I can use my credit card to send you $1, $20 or $1,000 to your investment portfolio and be part of your savings so you can get there faster.”
Here’s how it works: After downloading the app and creating a profile, users link their bank accounts and set up automatic deposits. They then create their first goal and share it with friends and family. Users can also discover and support others’ goals through Hyve’s social feeds.
The features of the free app include automatic purchase completion, one-click investing from a savings account, and 2.10% APY on all savings account balances. There are also financial tools to help eliminate debt.
Hyve is pre-revenue and is still in the very early stages, but through the beta program, users have created a “hyve” with an average of about three people and created savings goals that they want to reach that total of more than $850,000. Markowitz expects to reach 100,000 active users within the next year.
Future income planning includes costs for creating “smart” goals, saving to pay off student loans, a fee to match users with lenders, access to insights, and loan refinancing opportunities.
And while it’s aimed at consumers, Markowitz said the company recently found its first employer — whom he declined to name — adding 300 new customers to the roughly 1,000 people currently on the waiting list. In this model, employers pay Hyve a SaaS fee for each employee.
The company raised $2.25 million in a pre-seed round in January 2022 from an investor group that includes The Flying Whale VC, MoreVC and the founders of Guardio. It is currently raising another round of funding that is expected to close later this year.
