Millennial raised $2 million for money-saving app for immigrants

One millennial entrepreneur raised $2 million to build a financial app catered to traditional money-saving methods used by immigrant communities in the West.

Silicon Valley native Nina Mohanty founded Bloom Money in 2021, a fintech app designed to support U.K.-based immigrant communities to save money collaboratively, also known as “money circles” or rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCA). The 32-year-old founder has raised £1.5 million ($2 million) in venture capital to build Bloom Money.

Mohanty, who has lived in the U.K. for a decade and worked at banks like Klarna and Mastercard, says mainstream banks don’t understand how immigrant communities manage their money.

“At a certain point I just realized I got very frustrated wondering who was building for immigrant communities because I was building the same product for the same person all the time,” Mohanty said in an interview with CNBC Make It.

Mohanty pointed out that when it comes to money, much of the innovation for immigrant communities is focused on remittance as many transfer money to families in their home countries. “I kept scratching my head and wondering, why is all the innovation about sending money away and not actually about pooling resources and building wealth here?”

Immigrants tend to save money differently — rather than relying on mainstream options like high-interest savings accounts or taking loans from a bank, they rely on community and collaboration.

“I would speak to bus drivers on their cigarette breaks or aunties that are cleaning offices and ask them how they were managing their money and I kept coming across this thing where people were pooling funds together,” she explained.

This informal pooling system involves a group of people who commit to saving money together. For example, three friends agree to each pay $100 a month into a savings pot, making it a total of $300. The first month, one friend gets access to the full $300, which can be spent on a plane ticket home, new shoes for the kids, or even on investing in a business, among other things. The next month, the second friend gets to use the $300.

The rotation continues until each person gets the opportunity to spend the $300. The group can agree to continue the cycle for as long as they need.

“It’s academically called a roster or a rotating station [ROSCA], but it’s very community-led. It’s very socially led,” Mohanty said, adding that a number of ethnic groups have a name for the practice.

For example, it’s known as a chit fund by Indians; “pardner” by Jamaicans; “kameti” by Pakistanis; “ajo” or “esusu” by Nigerians; and “hagbad” by Somalis.

Mohanty pointed out that immigrant communities often faced discrimination within the financial system.

“In this country [U.K.], Jamaicans, for example, used to do this. When the Windrush generation first came over, because the banks wouldn’t lend to them, they would effectively build this microcredit within their own communities.”

Ethnic minorities in the U.K. still report facing discrimination. A 2023 report by the non-profit organization Fair4All Finance — which included a survey of 1,005 U.K. adults from ethnic minority groups and 1,182 white, British adults — found that one in five people from minority ethnic groups said they experienced racial discrimination when dealing with financial providers.

On top of that, 28% say they think that the way things work at financial organizations means ethnic minorities are more likely to be treated unfairly.

Although rotating savings have served as an informal but reliable system within immigrant communities, Mohanty highlighted various issues, such as a lack of regulation especially when dealing with cash in hand.

“There’s a clear gap here and we have the tech to be able to do this digitally,” Mohanty explained.

A few apps have emerged internationally to cater to this traditional savings method, including Egyptian money circles app Moneyfellows and Hakbah, an alternative financial savings app based in Saudi Arabia.

Bloom Money caters specifically to immigrant communities in the U.K. “who are straddling providing for two households” the company said. Users can create a circle and invite others to participate in that circle.

“That whole account is for the benefit of everyone that’s in the group,” Mohanty said. “You’re less likely to have a situation with someone taking the money and running home.”

And though it’s possible to manage a rotating money savings system via mainstream banks, the behavior was often flagged as “suspicious” when she worked at Monzo, Mohanty said.

“They were looking at this and going ‘What is this? This looks like money laundering.’ and so they would actually start shutting down accounts. If you don’t know what the behavior is, it’s going to look suspicious, but for us, we literally built the product around this behavior.”

Rotating savings “doesn’t fit into the Western construct,” Mohanty said, adding that the creation of Bloom Money is a “fight for a more diverse formal financial system.”

Bloom has aims that go beyond digitalizing the rotation of savings. It wants to build investment products, as many immigrants are so focused on sending money home that it comes at the expense of wealth planning for future generations.

“They’re not necessarily planning for their future or their next generation so imagine if our parents hadn’t saved or hadn’t put money into their pension pots or investment clubs and so we want to now make it so that people can build their wealth,” Mohanty said.

The Fair4All Finance report showed that compared with white, British people, ethnic minorities were less likely to have savings or investment accounts, and workplace pensions.

“Some experts highlighted that characteristics of minority ethnic groups can mean they are more likely to have ‘thin files’ with little credit history, so difficult to make a credit judgement to produce a credible credit score,” the report said.

“Positive behaviours such as regular remittances or taking part in informal savings circles do not contribute [to credit profiles] and we even found fears these could count against people.”

Now Bloom Money is building users’ credit profiles to lend money to them to help them invest in their pension pots or gold and “build financial services that are fit for diaspora who are straddling countries.”

Mohanty said the company hopes to “make it as easy as clicking a button to say ‘You’ve received your payout from your Bloom circle. Why don’t you invest it into your pension?'”