The $11 million Brooklyn Cooperative FCU has received a $300,000 grant from the Center for Financial Services Innovation to help develop the financial institution interface for a social network savings program.
The program, called Piggymojo, allows couples to cooperate in savings for goals they set jointly. For example, a couple might decide they want to save $2000 toward some goal over the course of a year and determine that will require them to save roughly $40 per week. After registering with Piggymojo, they are each able to text the site to reflect their savings activity, such as forgoing an coffee out or walking to something rather than taking a cab and how much money they saved by doing that. The site then adds that amount to their savings total and texts the partner about the savings, spurring them in turn to find a savings opportunity.
Brooklyn Cooperative's grant will is meant to help defray the cost of integrating the credit union's core processor into this system so that, in the future, when someone texts their savings to the site, they will also effectively move that amount of money from a checking account to a savings account.
“Our goal with the grant was to be able to offer piggymojo service to our members as well as maybe to use it to introduce more people to the CU. We are very excited about this very cool idea.”
