Ann: Active Customers & Funds Under Management - May 2020, page-22

A month ago I was seeking feedback regarding the Raiz service / app. After using the app for one month now I see why customers cease being active users. My feedback on the service:

1. Upon signing up, the app automatically added a $1 to every transaction I made. I was not provided an option to opt out of this at sign up. Also, I found it very difficult to navigate the app to change this option. Very disappointed by this.

2. My perception of the service was that rounded up money to the nearest dollar would be collected by Raiz immediately, and taken from my bank account and put into the Raiz account. I soon learned, that you would need to wait until you reached round up totalling five dollars and then this would be debited out of your bank account to your Raiz account. I do not like this for one particular reason-raise randomly deducts five dollars a few days later. potentially I would have no money in the bank account and would then be charged fees from my bank for the going into a negative balance.

3. A $2.50 monthly fee is absurd for this service. you're effectively paying $30 a year for your coin box that you have at home. Secondly, this is charged from your own bank account, and again like above, if you do not have the $2.50 in your bank account you will be charged fees from your bank if you go into a negative balance. I prefer them to pull the fee money from your raise investment account

4. The rewards program is a scam. Raiz is definitely adding no value to users. For example I booked a Brisbane hotel through Hotels.com for $178.20 and through Raiz I was looking at $198 with 4.2% reinvested

5. The investment portfolios are just a range of ETFs that anyone can access by signing up to her online stockbroker and having a minimum of $500. The only value Raiz is adding is that you can access ETFs for under $500. Given that they are charging you $30 a year for this privilege, you may as well avoid the service and use the $30 a year that you'll avoid paying and add this to your $500 goal.

Overall I was unimpressed with this service and see no value for me. It would be easier to create a separate bank account, manually transfer rounded up money into this bank account on a daily basis, earn 1/2%, save $500 and buy your own ETF through a cheap online broker.

I see in June they added less than 3000 customers. I don't see this business scaling to a size where the business will be valued in the hundreds of millions. I see it becoming irrelevant if it does not improve its user experience. I won't be an active user number in there July numbers.