Upside Saving

Idea

Introduction

The Problem: Household spending is under severe pressure.

11.5m people have less than £100 in savings, 9m often borrow to buy food and pay bills, 22m say they don’t have enough to retire on. And the economic fallout from Covid-19 will place even more pressure on households.

Natwest research states that consumers are wasting £25bn each year on unused direct debits, standing orders and recurring card payments.

There must be a better way to help people to save automatically.

The Solution:

By reinventing cashback through the power of Open banking, Upside helps households save, and Retailers sell.
Upside’s open-banking-marketing-platform connects Retailers with consumers in a relevant and rewarding way: By offering frictionless cashback (‘upside’), Retailers help consumers build up emergency savings in their time of need, whilst driving incremental sales.

How it works:

Automated savings that grow as you spend.

Upside enables customers to automatically start saving by harvesting upside from their everyday spending, without compromising their lifestyle. With the potential to accumulate hundreds of Pounds a year.

*This is a current screenshot of the application with proposed partners.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Since incorporation in Jan 2020, the business has progressed significantly in a short amount of time:

• All licenses and platforms in place to trade (incl FCA approval)
• Raised £540k+ from founders and SEIS Angel Investors previously.
• 700+ consumers already signed-up as private alpha testers.
• Strong pipeline of retail partners and business development capability

• Strong founding team including:

Strong advisory board including:

Paul Clark | Ex-CTO Tandem | Neo-bank Product Expert.

Marcus East | Google | CTO Office and GV Board member.

Ranila Ravi-Burslem | Savings Champion.

James Blower | The Savings Guru | Savings Expert.

Brian Dunne | Mr Giftcard UK | Retail Expert.

Greg Davis | Oxford Risk | Behavoural Finance Expert.

Monetisation strategy

Our business model is aligned with the end customer: we make money, when we find money for the customer.

Practically, we will take a commission of all the 'upside' found on behalf of customers.

Example:

We do a marketing deal with Retailer X through which that retailer pays say 3% cashback on all purchases from upside customers ('upsiders'). Say Upsider Y spends £100 at Retailer X, we will see that on Upsider Y's bank account via open banking.

We will then claim the £3 cashback from Retailer X. We earn a commission on that £3 and pay the net cashback over to Upsider Y.

Use of proceeds

The investment is intended to drive us through the next phase by:

• Onboard more retail partners
• Build out a self-serve retailer platform
• Build out Upside-as-a-Service API gateway
• Prepare for Seed funding in Q1 2021

The data and customer outcomes delivered through this pilot will then used to prepare for the seed funding round, and scaling strategy.
Funds will be used for business development, operations and technology.