London-based Chip completes largest equity crowdfund during COVID-19 lockdown

London-based Chip is an app that puts money aside automatically for you so that you can save to meet your financial goals without thinking about it. The app is free to download and is compatible with both Android and iOS devices. Chip uses Artificial Intelligence to decide what to save and sends you a notification of how much money you are to put aside and transfers the same automatically to your Chip account. However, it gives you an option to cancel the same.

Largest equity crowdfund during global crisis

Now, Chip has announced its growth opportunity with its investor community as 4240 people have invested £2.6 million for its growth. In collaboration with Crowdcube, the private round crossed its £1 million target within hours. This makes it the largest equity crowdfund to be completed in the UK during the lockdown.

Chip will use the investment to further accelerate its growth including the launch of an FSCS protected savings account via a partner bank with one of the highest savings rates in the market. It will also use it to deliver new features to accommodate the changing behaviours of their savers since the debut of the pandemic.

Unprecedented growth in recent times

In the first three months of 2020, Chip witnessed an increase of 40% in its userbase with a growth of 13% each month. The ‘safety net fund’ has knocked ‘holiday’ off the top spot as the most popular goal set by savers since the outbreak started.

Simon Rabin, CEO and founder of Chip, said: “We’ve seen unprecedented growth during these difficult times, which demonstrates that Chip is incredibly useful for putting money aside for safety net and emergency funds. Off the back of this growth, we wanted to share the opportunity with our investor community, and have been overwhelmed by their response.”

Luke Lang, co-founder of Crowdcube, commented: “The raise with Chip shows that, despite the bigger economic turmoil, there is still an appetite from communities and everyday investors to support startup and scaleup businesses. Investors see that Chip is a service that helps people manage their money and save and they want to give support to that movement. Chip’s growth is over and above the fintech app’s greater market growth which has seen average weekly app downloads jump 20% between the end of last year and the first three months of this year.”

Main image picture credits: Chip

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