Micro-investing app Acorns has teamed up with a group of retailers to transfer the monetary value of accumulated loyalty points to customers' portfolio accounts.
Retailers participating in the Found Money programme include Hotel Tonight, JackThreads, Jet.com, 1-800-Flowers.com and Dollar Shave Club. When customers spend money with these brands using the same cards that they have linked to Acorns, the companies will make an investment in their Acorns accounts.
"Loyalty programs have been the same for eons," says Noah Kerner, Acorns CEO. "Everybody's doing cash back. This generation wants cash forward. They want brands that take a vested interest in them. What better way to do that than to invest in their futures?"
Brands collaborating with the Found Money program will have a continuous presence in customers' Acorns accounts with their investments clearly highlighted within the app experience, he says, More merchant partners are set to be announced in the coming months.
Established by father and son duo Walter and Jeff Cruttenden, Acorns claims 850,000 active investment accounts. Customers accumulate fractional shares from the spare change in their debit and credit card purchases and automatically invest and save into a portfolio constructed by Nobel Laureate economist Dr. Harry Markowitz.
In April, the firm announced a $30 million investment round, with participation from PayPal and the Rakuten Fund, bringing its total funding to $62 million since launch in 2014.