Qube Money

Digital Cash Envelope Banking—giving the control of spending back to the people

Last Funded May 2022

$606,634

raised from 366 investors
Pitch Video
Investor Panel

Highlights

1
🥇 #1 budgeting app of 2021—Real Simple Smart Money Awards.
2
🚀 35k+ downloads and averaging 80 new customers per day.
3
💵 $16.48 customer acquisition cost (CAC). $92.88 annual average revenue per account (ARPA).
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❤️ $440/month (avg) in savings per customer when credit card spending is replaced with Qube Money.

Featured Investor

Our Team

Our co-founders grew up in homes where finances were a source of stress and pain. Ryan's parents divorced over money. Shane's were stuck in scarcity and fear. People, when empowered with the right system, can change. The modern financial world fails to foster positive money behaviors. We believe Qube is THE system that empowers financial change.

Qube Money

My Fellow Qubers,

This is Shane, Co-founder of Qube Money. 👋

Today I’m excited to give you an update on Qube Money’s exciting progress and invite you to become part of a historic crowdfunding effort that will revolutionize the world.

(FYI: If you're an accredited investor, feel free to email me at [email protected].)

First, I’ll review the investor quick facts and recap the past few years. Then I'll share the explosive growth we're experiencing right now! 🚀

Quick Investor Facts

😟 The Problem We're Solving

  • 3 out of 4 adults list money as their biggest cause of stress. The world’s digital financial system removes intention and awareness from spending. In the relentless pursuit of easier and faster, spending has become so mindless, people don’t even know where their money goes anymore. The U.S. consumer debt balance increased by over $1.1 Trillion in 2021 (the most ever 🤯). After-the-fact budgeting apps don’t work!
  • The Financial Coaching industry doesn't have a banking solution that supports what they teach. They also don't have an easy way to track their clients' financial health or progress. Doing so requires significant time to dig into bank accounts, categorize transactions, and compare actual spending to their budget.

🏦 The Solution

  • The simple answer is that the world desperately needs a change, and Qube Money is poised to be one of the defining catalysts of our age to make it happen.
  • Digital cash envelope banking. Qube Money is a digital bank where users bank and spend money from their budget, giving them real-time awareness and control of their money without the hassle of tracking expenses and managing spreadsheets. Cash Envelope Budgeting is the most successful budgeting system in history, but it is hard in our ever-increasing cashless society. Qube Money brings cash envelope budgeting into the digital age.
  • Because Qube Money is the bank and the budget, Financial Coaches now have a bank that aligns with what they teach. In addition, their clients who adopt Qube Money can give their coaches view-only access to see their real-time spending analytics.

💵 Amount Raised To-Date
$8.2M

⚖️ Breakeven
10,000 paid users

🔥 Monthly Burn
$190,000

🚀 Traction

  • 2,100 paid users
  • 80 new accounts per day
  • Ranked the #1 Budgeting App of 2021 by Real Simple Smart Money Awards 
  • $50,000 per month of recurring revenue.

🏢 The Business Model

3 revenue verticals:

  • Interchange: 1.13% of the transaction fee every time a Qube Debit Card is swiped. (The merchant pays VISA this fee and Visa shares it with Qube Money.)
  • Account fees: $8/month for the Premium Account and $15/month for the Family Account (coming soon)
  • Coaches Dashboard: $29-129/month (coming soon)

📢 The Marketing Plan

  • 200+ marketing partnerships. Companies and financial bloggers, coaches, and advisors, including The Busy Budgeter, The College Investor, and Lauren Greutman. 
  • 8.9 out of 10 net promoter score (how willing our users are to share the app with others).

📈 The Market Potential

  • Financial health banking: $30 billion in annual revenue
  • Financial Coaching SAAS: $10 million in annual revenue (coaches connect financially conscious people to Qube Money and create adoption of the app)

Our Story:

💰 The Banking System That Puts People in Control

Qube Money completely revolutionizes today's banking experience. Instead of spending and then trying to keep track of your money after the fact, you're spending directly from your budget, so you're always in control.

💔 The Moment

It all started with a couple who told our other co-founder, Ryan, that the next 10 years for them, financially, had to be different from the last. Nine months after Ryan spent much blood, sweat, and tears trying to help them as their financial coach, they were divorced.

When Ryan heard the news about their divorce, he was devastated! He had grown to love this couple and their family. He felt like he had failed them. Deep down he knew he hadn’t. The digital financial system within which we all live failed them. Modern payment technologies make spending so easy, the masses are spending their way into financial ruin.

This couple had been making over $250,000 a year in the Texas oil industry for over a decade. They had two beautiful children, a gorgeous home, sleek cars, all the toys, and box seats to their favorite sporting events, but very little in retirement savings. They came to Ryan as a referral from a friend, pleading to him for help.

Ryan spent hours helping them create a budget, build a spending system, and track their progress. Despite this, within months their zeal faded, and they returned to using credit cards. Shortly thereafter they filed for divorce.

When Ryan was in high school, his parents divorced, largely because of money. It was one of the toughest points in his life. His parents' divorce was the reason he has dedicated his life to helping others with their finances.

Ryan called a friend who was a payment processing developer and invited him to lunch, to discuss the possibility of digitizing the cash envelope method of spending. Cash envelope budgeting was the only system he knew which successfully changed spending behavior, because they were spending directly from their budget. But few stuck to it long-term because paying with cash and carrying around a bunch of cash envelopes isn’t practical in today’s world.

The lunch meeting turned into a three-hour digital cash envelope product development meeting. And thus, the idea for Qube Money was born.

🎬 The Beginning

In August 2019 we announced our plans to create Qube Money—Digital Cash Envelope Banking. By the end of 2019, we'd raised $2M from amazing, mission-driven investors and we went to work.

Financial technology giant Galileo expressed an interest in partnering with us to build digital cash envelope banking. They introduced us to Joyce Mehlman, former COO of Bancorp. While at Bancorp, Joyce helped start Fintech icons Chime, Moven, and Varo. She and her team, iLex Group, became our compliance team. 🤩

🏢 The Foundation

2020 was spent contracting with strategic partners and developing digital cash envelope banking.

In April 2020, the U.S. Copyright Office issued us a systems and process patent for digital cash envelopes. 🙌

Joyce connected us with Visa as our card partner, and Choice Financial Group as our bank partner. Hipo Labs, the company that built Robinhood, Keen Home, and IcebreakerAR, developed our proprietary spending methodology.

Joyce Mehlman and Taylan Pence (CEO of Hipo Labs) are both individual investors. (Goosebumps.) They’re amazing!

By the end of 2020, real-time digital cash envelope banking was working. 🎊

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 The Customer Experience

2021 was all about nailing an incredible customer experience. Let’s be honest, the best form of advertising is an AMAZING PRODUCT!

Our customers (you!) are everything to us. We heard your feedback via customer focus groups, interviews, observation, surveys, open forum customer feedback tools, and chat. Thousands of hours have gone into creating exactly what will help you get your money to behave - for good!

We will not rest until spending with purpose is as easy as breathing.

Although we weren't focused on growth in 2021, we saw consistent month-over-month growth in revenue.

🤓 The Impact

Throughout beta testing, we measured the impact we’re having on individuals’ finances. Shortly after people joined, we sent a survey to ask them how they budgeted and managed their finances before joining us. We sent another survey six months later to measure our impact.

So far, 581 people have completed the first survey and 38 users have completed the second survey. I know the sample size is small so far, but the feedback has been invaluable.

  • Qube saves users between $4000 and $470 per month. Overall, our users saw a 415% increase in savings. 📈
  • We can confidently say that Qube Money helps users decrease spending on unplanned purchases by $197 - $289 per month. Overall, we saw a 21% decrease in spending on unplanned purchases. 📉
  • 50% of people who use Qube reported going from "not good at sticking to a budget," to saying "yes, I am good at sticking to a budget now."
  • Qube Money decreases money stress by 14.5%.

Recently, I made a vow to our Qubers (Our Qube-Users 😉): Every single morning, I start my day reading a page of notes from our early adopters about why they came to Qube Money. So far, EVERY. SINGLE. MORNING I get tears in my eyes, as I’m so moved by the impact Qube Money is having in people’s lives. 🥰😭

Here’s a sample of the notes I read this morning:

The most important benefit of Qube Money is how it changes the way people feel about money. The benefits we hear over and over are confidence, control, peace of mind, financial harmony, the satisfaction of following a plan, and excitement of saving for and reaching financial goals. Qube Money is a total game changer!

In our Facebook group, on October 1, 2021, someone asked if Qube Money was "worth it," and here is how our community responded:

And we're just getting started!

If you can’t tell, we’re ALL-IN committed to creating a banking system that makes spending and saving with purpose a seamless part of your everyday life, so you can experience more joy, peace, and impact with your money. At our very core, we want to empower you to live the life you want and bless the lives of those who matter most to you.

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve added new Spending, Bills, Overview, Funding, and Notification Screens with an absolutely gorgeous user interface. We built automated budget tracking on the Activity Screens for real-time user awareness. Joint Accounts have been tested with companion cards and partner notifications. Qubeless was launched, so users can continue to use their card even if their phone dies, or they're in a poor cell service area (don't worry, this won't break your budget).

Now, we’re starting to scale. 

🚀 Traction

2022 is poised for tremendous growth.

We’ve attracted over 200 affiliate partnerships in the budgeting niche including The College Investor, The Busy Budgeter, and Well Kept Wallet. We sponsor FinCon (the largest event for financial influencers in the world) every year. 

This is where we met Rosemarie Groner, The Busy Budgeter. June 2021, she held a webinar for a portion of her audience to promote Qube Money. From that one webinar and two follow up emails, she brought in over 900 accounts alone.

Rosemarie's first webinar was a trial to see how well Qube Money's servers could handle the growth. We needed to make some changes, and we did. As of February 2022, Rosemarie has fully partnered with Qube Money to build marketing funnels for her audience. We have an agreement in place to duplicate these funnels with other financial health influencers she knows. This partnership has amazing promise, and we are so excited for it!

Another TV icon and financial health expert, Lauren Greutman, is also a huge fan. (The feeling is mutual!) She promoted Qube Money on the Rachael Ray Show on February 2, 2022.

The show brought 5,246 people to our website, 1,206 started the account creation process and joined our email database, and 483 people became account holders.

We are working with Lauren to do 2-3 media appearances per month. With numbers like the Rachael Ray Show, this will double our new accounts per day.

We’re kind of on fire! 🔥

🚀 Join Us

We were going to continue to raise money through mission-driven accredited investors and then we thought…

Why not allow you the opportunity to invest? You, the community we are so passionate about serving, who have believed in us from the beginning, and have been our greatest supporters?

Now's the time! You can join our movement as investors, for as little as $100. Imagine the massive momentum we can build, together! 🤯

✉️ Real Digital Cash Envelope Budgeting

When spending is under control, debt elimination and savings happen naturally.

Just like cash envelopes, Qube helps organize your money into digital envelopes we call "qubes". You can have a qube for anything you spend money on - groceries, fuel, entertainment, Netflix, car repairs, Christmas, family trip, etc. 

When you're ready to spend, you simply open your app and tap the balance of the qube you want to spend from. Instantly, the balance of that qube is available on your Qube Card and you're ready to use it like any other VISA card.  

By looking at your budget before you spend, you make better decisions. And because the money was spent from your budget, that money is gone. You never have to reconcile your spending with your budget again. It's automatic, real-time awareness. 

All other proclaimed envelope budgeting apps are ‘after-the-fact’ tracking apps. None of them have the power to get in front of the purchase like Qube does. This is the secret to financial behavior change, and no one does it better.

♟ Game-Changing Features

You would need to download seven different apps to access all the features Qube Money has to offer. You get the same core functionality of a bank with so much more.

And we’re just beginning to scratch the surface.

🏦 The Best in Mobile Banking

Enjoy early payday. The day your employer processes your paycheck is the day your money gets deposited into your Qube Money account, usually up to 2 days early.

Qube Money is a financial technology company—not a bank. Banking services are provided by Choice Financial Group, member FDIC.

💕 Joint Accounts Improve Relationships

Other apps tell you what you’ve done in the past, but aren’t great at helping couples work together or prepare for the future. Two cards, two phones, and two people are connected in one amazing plan. Qube Money transforms the environment of your money, so making decisions together in the moment and maintaining a shared vision for the future is possible. Accurate, real-time updates create awareness, transparency, and better communication about money.

Money is the #1 cause of divorce. We want to decrease the divorce rate by 1% and are passionate about improving partner and family relationships. Qube money helps improve financial communication in relationships. Period.

🔒 Default Zero Tech Makes the Qube Card the Safest on the Planet

The Qube Money Visa debit card has a default $0 balance. AKA, your card has $0 on it until you open a qube. This means you’re the only one who can spend from it. If it’s lost or stolen, hackers would also have to hack your mobile device AND your Qube App to open a qube in order to steal your money. No other card gives you the same level of privacy and control. We offer multiple layers of security to ensure your money and account are safe.

Here’s what one user said after a hacker tried to use her card info:

“This morning some criminal tried to buy an Apple Watch on Walmart+ with my Qube card. But it declined. Ha...Ha...Ha...I have not found a single reason why Qube isn’t the bank of the future. Thank you to this amazing team, that I’m sure will save people $$$$ and tons of headaches. Thank you Qube Money, for giving people big-time peace of mind!"

❌ Subscription Controls Let You Decide Who Gets Paid

What if you could turn off automatic payments from your bank? Now you can. 

Qube’s subscription controls help users allocate money for and manage their automatic payments. Qube doesn't process payments if there isn't a qube open, or aren't enough funds in the qube. It's a great way to avoid overdrafts, charges, and free trial subscriptions you forgot to cancel.

The ability to cancel a pending payment in the app is also a game-changer compared to other subscription control apps that will negotiate payments and call in on your behalf. This is just another way we're putting the control back into your hands.

🗺 What's on the Roadmap?

*This road map is based on our ability to raise $4.5M.  

Here’s a sneak peek of what’s to come! I can't wait for Family features (with Kid cards!), Automated Debt Elimination, Card Rewards, and High-yield Savings. What's on your wishlist?

Are you a small business owner who could use Qube to manage your expenses? Or are you an investor, who wants an easy way to save funds to invest in the markets?

Here's the cool thing - as an early adopter, you can be part of making history. If you can dream it, we can create it!

Click here to create a Qube Money bank account today!

📈 Market Potential

There are 269M Americans aged 18 and above. According to 2018 U.S. Labor Statistics, the average American household spends approximately $2,000/month on credit cards. The potential annual bank interchange revenue from these purchases is $89.7B. Interchange is the fee businesses pay to credit card companies for the ability to accept debit/credit cards as payment. The bank card partner shares in this revenue.

45M people in the United States have a budgeting app on their phone. At least 10M have tried cash envelope budgeting. Is there any question that people are looking for easy ways to get their money to behave?

🏢 Business Model

Many budgeting and personal finance apps and banks have tried to do this in the past, but haven’t been able to scale significantly. So, what makes Qube Money different?

No other personal finance technology has brought the bank and the budget together, allowing people to spend from their budget in real-time. And no other technology empowers consumers to activate their money before they make a purchase. This is the secret sauce that changes behavior - the value financially conscious people are looking for. It is the magic that entices them to replace their credit card spending with Qube Card spending.

And when our users choose their Qube Card, we earn interchange revenue.

Interchange revenue comes from the fees retailers pay to the card companies (Visa and Mastercard) for the ability to take card payments. Every time one of our customers processes their Qube Card, we make 1.13% in Interchange revenue.

Qube Money earns additional money from account fees. We have a free version of the app to compete with Varo and Chime. We also have a Premium account for $8 per month and a Family account for $15 per month. The only way to sufficiently monetize budgeting apps (YNAB, Ramsey+, Mvelopes) and Teen/Kid Cards (Greenlight, Current, Famzoo) is through fees, so financially conscious people are accustomed to paying for these features. So, why can't we? And we'll do it better!

Lastly, there are over 4,000 Financial Coaches looking for a bank that facilitates what they teach. Tracking spending is a nightmare! So, what if Qube Money enabled its customers to authorize view-only access to statements and spending reports for their coach? 🤓

Coming soon, Qube Money will have a Coach's Dashboard which will give coaches real-time access to their clients' budgets and spending data. Coaches will pay a subscription to Qube Money between $29-$129 per month, depending on how many clients they have on our platform.

🥳 Join the Financial Revolution!

The potential of the future is incredible!  

Money is fundamental to every part of life. When you get your spending and savings focused on what really matters to you CONSISTENTLY, you will build the power to create incredible impact to those you love most.

When you have this level of focused budgeting, you are empowered to spend on what’s important now, while knowing you're saving for your future as well. You'll experience true abundance, when your use of money aligns with your life's purpose.

I can’t begin to tell you how fiercely committed we are to helping you experience this level of fulfillment. It's not a goal. It's a state of being.

We believe everyone is capable of achieving it. That's why we include a personal finance education course and Financial Coaching in our offerings.

Together we have the opportunity to change the course of modern banking.

With Love, Ambition, and Courage I say… 

QUBERS UNITE!!! 💪

Let’s do this.

Together.

Today.

Invest and grow with us.

Are you in?

Investor Pitch Deck

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