AND Digital joins Upside to accelerate effortless savings

There are 11.95m+ households in the UK with less than £1,500 in savings. Since early March, the catastrophic impact of Covid-19 has highlighted the treacherous situation the country is facing regarding these savings. It has become evident that far too many households are living to their means every month, and dipping into what savings they have in order to make it through the pandemic.

The fast-growing fintech sector has a real role to play in helping the public respond to the current situation and help customers post Covid-19. Since the beginning of the crisis, consumers have flocked to savings and investment apps. In April 2020, the total minutes spent in finance apps increased by 22 percent.

Pre-seed investment from AND Digital

Upside is one such example of an innovative fintech with a clear mission to improve people’s financial security.

Committed to making savings effortless and automatic, Upside helps people save money in relation to their current spending. The London-based startup is currently creating a unique solution utilising the power of Open Banking to help customers automatically build up enough emergency savings so that any future economic downturns will have much less impact on households.

Upside’s proposition and desire to build a nation of savers struck a chord with Paramjit Uppal, founder of AND Digital, and the company has subsequently provided pre-seed investment in addition to digital product and software development expertise. The investment and technical input will help Upside build the new app far faster - enabling them to make a positive impact on people’s financial health as soon as possible.

“The clarity of Upside’s vision to make savings ‘effortless’ is reflected in the collective insight and strength of experience visible across its founding board. This vision resonates powerfully with AND’s values and our own mission to help build digital products which make a remarkable impact on end-users’ lives” comments Paramjit Uppal.

Upside’s founder, Andries Smit said:

“AND's values and customer-centricity in product design is what attracted us to them. We both believe that customers expect effortless digital interactions, especially in a world where inertia is the biggest enemy of savings. Making savings effortless is no mean feat and we need exceptional partners. AND's investment aligns our goals and sets us up for an exciting partnership."

Stay tuned - a new solution is coming

Both companies are highly driven by the belief that helping people improve their financial security has never felt more relevant and necessary.

Upside brings together founders from financial services, wealth management, and loyalty, whilst AND Digital has already established itself as a leading expert in delivering digital products and services for the financial services sector. AND Digital’s experience in this space means that together, these companies aim to deliver a ground-breaking ‘Upside-saving’ solution into users’ hands in July 2020.

Sign up here to be part of Upside’s early beta.

About Upside

Upside is a London-based fintech startup which aims to utilise the power of open banking and help consumers build effortless savings through the power of data, as well as helping merchants engage with their customers on a new level. Upside’s Founder Andries Smit had come up with his idea before the Covid-19 crisis, but the current situation has only highlighted the need to build up savings for every household. Upside has recently closed a pre-seed round of over £500k and is looking forward to launching its main seed round formally in July.

About AND Digital

Founded in 2014 by Paramjit Uppal, AND Digital is the go-to digital enablement partner for global organisations including British Airways, Gousto, NBrown Group and Condé Nast. AND Digital empowers organisations with the ability to build digital products AND grow their internal capability along the way. To achieve this, the company blends technical software craft and digital product expertise with an award-winning learning and development ethos.