News first broke of Zopa’s plans to launch a bank in November of 2016. During the four-year-period since then, the U.K.-based P2P lender has been slowly progressing toward becoming a fully fledged challenger bank.
Today, Zopa took this initiative a step further, launching a credit card offering. Zopa said that the card is specifically designed to help users stay in control of their money and their debt.
The card has two tools that help users manage their money. The first is called Safety Net. The Safety Net feature allows users to lock up some of their available credit balance to use for small, unexpected expenses. Customers decide how much of their available credit to lock away and can easily unlock access to the credit via the mobile app.
The card, in combination with the mobile app, also offers real time balance updates. The feature enables users to see how much credit they have available in real time, without needing to wait for the transaction to show up in their balance statement.
“The credit card market hasn’t caught up with the standard of other digital products and customers have been waiting too long for a better experience,” said Zopa CEO Jaidev Janardana. “At Zopa, we believe that credit cards need to be revolutionized so we have built a card designed around putting the customer in control. Industry firsts such as our Safety Net feature and handy tools like real time credit balance updates help customers manage their money effectively, enabling them to build a good credit profile.
Zopa’s credit card also offers users the ability to view spending categories, instantly freeze and unfreeze the card, turn on/off certain spending categories such as gambling and cash withdrawals, and make contactless payments.
The Safety Net tool is just the latest example of Zopa launching customer-first products for the underbanked population. In October of last year the company launched Borrowing Power, a tool that leverages AI to show users what makes up their personal borrowing power and guide them toward actions to help improve it.