Simon Wing,

co-founder and CEO, Edfundo

What inspired you to set up Edfundo?

The initiative emerged from our passion and goal as teachers to bring financial literacy to our youth, who need to be included in the digital economy.

We are from a generation where financial literacy was not taught in schools and even today – due to the lack of lesson plans and teaching tools available to guide educators – it is often overlooked or paid lip service to by schools. However, financial education is vitally important as a foundation for the younger generation to help them navigate life as adults.

Andrew Toward, who is Edfundo’s cofounder and COO, and I also realised there was a huge gap in the market to address the needs of unbanked youngsters. We knew we could help plug the gap, particularly as teachers who understand

Andrew Toward, co-founder and COO, Edfundo

how children and teens learn and understand concepts. This led to the creation of Edfundo, a digital neo banking model for kids and teens.

Our target audience include not just children and teens, but also parents, the entire education ecosystem and the financial industry.

We’ve built the Edfundo app in partnership with the region’s leading banking-as-a-service provider, a tier-one regulated bank in the UAE and Visa. Parents in the UAE can sign up for an Edfundo Parent Wallet and then create an Edfundo Youth Account for their child or children. This comes with a prepaid Visa debit card that can be used in stores and online anywhere in the world where Visa cards are accepted.

The Edfundo app is engaging and makes learning about money simple, practical, fun and rewarding – all within a secure environment. Young children and teens can choose to save for a specific goal, and learn the power of saving for their future.

Using Edfundo’s flexible parental control feature, parents can upload funds and transfer allowances in an instant, top up their child’s card in a single click, set spending rules, set tasks or chores for their offspring to boost their earnings, decide where their youngsters can spend their money, get real-time notification of their spending, and instantly block or unblock cards at any time.

Additionally, our dashboards can track the youngster’s spending and saving.