This fintech app serves Gen Z on their own terms

Douglas Avery, a 20-year old from Bridgeville, Delaware, went off to college at Virginia Wesleyan University in 2017 with an entrepreneurial spirit and an interest in baseball.

It was through the school’s baseball team that he met some of the people who would become his cofounders of FinX Mobile, which built an iOS app called FinX Hub that takes the sometimes-dry subject of financial literacy and aims to make it accessible, especially to the 17-to-25 age demographic.

“Nowadays you have [financial literacy] entrepreneurs who have courses they’ll sell you,” Avery told Technical.ly. “I went through every route out there with that, and I wasn’t a fan of it. We decided we wanted to change the industry, because it seemed like it was kind of stalling out on us.”

The team — Alex Vawter (CEO), Mark Shust (CFO), Andrew Weber (CIS), Chris Baker (head of film and media), Dustin Stapp (head of business development), Logan Harper (head of written media and education) and Avery, who is the startup’s CMO — set out to solve the problem of financial products not engaging with younger, more diverse audiences in November 2018.

The app, which is currently available as a functional beta in the iOS app store, utilizes a format that young users will be comfortable with: a newsfeed that delivers unique content, including videos, articles and quizzes. Upcoming features include weekly competitions with prizes and, eventually, a micro-investing platform.

“Basically it’s a smaller version of what we want in the future,” said Avery. “You’ll see face to face interaction with us. Other apps you go in and invest your money and leave. With us you socialize, compete, and get educated through the app.”

The social aspect is there, but it’s not traditional social media where anyone can share (potentially bad) information. The FinX team creates all of the content in-house, so they know what information their users are getting.

FinX is available for free; the money is made via strategic partnerships, lead generation and advertising.

Ultimately, Avery hopes to see FinX Mobile as the first mobile financial services choice for young adults.

“We want to bring financial literacy to the pockets of those that don’t really have the guidance or the assets that we believe a young person should have,” he said. “My aspiration for this is just to impact as many lives as possible and provide that guidance.”