Hip Money launched a Kickstarter campaign to help founder Mark Zmarzly and his team take the next step in the development of their new savings app. The campaign began at 11 a.m. Wednesday morning, and Hip Money is throwing a launch party later that afternoon at Fuse Co-Working in Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s the first fintech app to go the Kickstarter route and is already more than halfway to its $15,000 goal.
“Hip Money is helping to fuel a movement,” Zmarzly wrote in the invitation to the event. The app is designed to help millennials and young professionals save more money easier. With a swipe, Hip Money users can transfer small amounts of money to their savings or to prepay a loan. “Millennials want to live their lives in the present while not feeling like they’re failing when it comes to their financial future,” Zmarzly said.
Pictured (left to right): Hip Pocket’s Todd Cramer, head of design, and CEO Mark Zmarzly, founder, demonstrated their mortgage comparison software at FinovateSpring 2015 in San Jose, California.
Hip Money is the latest product from Zmarzly, who demoed his Hip Pocket mortgage comparison software solution last year at FinovateSpring 2015. Emphasizing Hip Money’s potential to help borrowers as well as savers, Zmarzly estimates the app will save the average user more than $100 in interest each year by transferring “extra” cash into loan repayments.
And like modern political campaigns, the Hip Money Kickstarter comes with both movement and manifesto. Referring to his app as part of the “Fingers Up” movement (#FINGERSUP), Zmarzly said, “Our goal was to create a movement of people that forces our country’s banks and financial systems to rethink the way they do business—a movement that would force change with a single app and a million FU fingers.”
That’s a swiping, INDEX finger, by the way.
Summer is once again a busy time for Zmarzly. His Hip Pocket solution was featured in Inc.’s look at the Silicon Prairie last July, a month after Hip Pocket was named one of three finalists for Startup Voodoo’s Most Promising Startups award. Hip Pocket earned a runner’s up spot at the inaugural FinCon FinTech Startup Competition held in Charlotte, North Carolina last fall.
