Recently, Will Smith invested in Step, a mobile-based banking service app meant to equip teenagers with financial literacy. He made the investment through his Dreamers fund which intends to raise at least $100 million for investments in start-up ventures with a social twist.
Step makes it possible for teenagers to not only send but also receive money from their family and friends while, at the same time, getting real-time notifications. Step also allows the teenagers not to deal with monthly or overdraft fees and there is no minimum balance that traditional bank customers usually incur.
Stripe is the main investor of the platform but others include Nas, Ronnie Lott, Kevin Gould, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Wndrco, Mout founders Noah and Jonah Goodhart and Matt Rutler. The cumulative investment made amounts to about $22.5 million in funding.
Prior to this investment, the company closed previous round of investments with Crosslink Capital, Sesame Ventures and Collaborative Fund.
“Schools don’t teach kids about money. We want to be their first bank accounts with spending cards, but we also want to teach financial literacy and responsibility. Banks don’t tailor to this, and we want to be a solution for teaching the next generation of adults to be more responsible with money in the cashless era. It was easy with cash to go to the mall but now everyone is using their phone for Uber and more,” CJ MacDonald, the CEO and co-founder said in an interview with TechCrunch.
The funding by Will Smith and company will be channelled towards bringing Step’s first product into the market – banking accounts with payment cards attached. According to various sources, this will be made possible thanks to a partnership with Evolve and Mastercard.
The app will go a long way in changing things as far as how teenagers regard and handle financial matters at least from that early age thanks to the investment by Will Smith.
