Hyve is gaining momentum with its new social savings app

Hyve’s money app is aimed at Gen Z and young millennials with a way to pay off debt, save and invest with the help of friends and family. The social economy app is now open to the public after a year of testing the product with hundreds of beta users.

Hyve is building a multi-player fintech infrastructure for savings and investment where users can create their network of supporters, and these people can automatically round up purchases to match the user’s personal cash contribution. The more people added to the “hive”, the more money the user saves to reach their goals.

Royi Markowitz, co-founder and CEO, Hyve. Image credit: Hype

Social economy is by no means a new concept, think Public.com, Rich Money, Braid, Follow and Shares. However, Royi Markowitz, co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that Hyve is a hybrid between Venmo and Acorns and differentiates itself from the competition through its infrastructure.

“At our core is our ledger, which is the movement of money within the platform,” Markowitz said. “Converting a single player ledger to a hybrid 3D multiplayer ledger is very, very difficult, especially for a company that already has hundreds of order lines in the ledger. Hyve is really the only place I can use my credit card to send you $1 or $20 or $1,000 into your investment portfolio and be part of your savings so you can get there faster.”

Here’s how it works: After downloading the app and creating a profile, users link their bank accounts and set up automatic deposits. Then they create their first goal and share it with friends and family. Users can also discover other people’s goals via Hyve’s social feeds and support them.

The free app’s features include automatic rounding of purchases, one-click investing from a savings account, and 2.10% APY on all savings account balances. There are also financial tools to eliminate debt.

Hyve is pre-revenue and still in the early stages, but through its beta program, users have created a “hyve” with an average of about three people and created savings goals that they want to achieve totaling over $850,000. Markowitz expects to reach 100,000 active users during the next year.

Future plans for revenue include paying to create “smart” goals, saving to pay off student loans, a fee to connect users with lenders, access to insights and loan refinancing options.

And while it’s focused on consumers, Markowitz said the company recently secured its first employer — which he declined to name — adding 300 new customers to the roughly 1,000 people currently on its waiting list. Under this model, employers will pay Hyve a SaaS fee for each employee.

The company raised $2.25 million in a pre-seed round in January 2022 from an investor group that included The Flying Whale VC, MoreVC and the founders of Guardio. It is currently raising a new round of funding which is expected to close later this year.