After a successful two year run in Australia, micro-investment company Acorns has today announced they’re splitting with their US-parent company in order to create their own spinoff, called Raiz.
The split, which was actually announced in February will see very little change according to Raiz Invest Managing Director, George Lucas. The move simply divests them of the Acorns branding and switches to Raiz. It’s the ‘same Australian team that has been operating and running the successful Acorns Australia platform, investment strategy and customer care’ said Mr Lucas.
Acorns, or now Raiz was launched on the philosophy of automatically saving and investing small amounts on a regular basis, either through regular contributions, or monitoring your account to round up purchases to the nearest whole dollar amount. Using this philosophy, Raiz has seen significant growth since their launch in 2016, with Mr Lucas revealing the company has gained 460,000 users since they launched under the AcornsAU branding in 2016.
The obvious change for users will be the updated website, which now redirects to raizinvest.com.au and Android app which will use the new Raiz Invest brand, logo and colour scheme. The Android (and iOS) app will also change name from Acorns AU to Raiz, with the update pushed to users through Google Play (and the iOS app store) overnight.
Mr Lucas went on to say ‘Whilst our users will not notice any immediate difference to the way the app works, they will start to notice a product that becomes more tailored to their unique needs, with changes based on the feedback they share’.
The change will also see new improvements and new products being launched in the coming months, which Mr Lucas said will ‘help our customers save in the background of life’.
You can check out Raiz at their website, or download the app from Google Play now.
Who ? Just wondering how that relates to what Ausdroid does. You can post what you want but I just wonder how it relates to Ausdroid.
We reported on the Acorns launch, we reported on First Steps, an Australian startup with a similar model.
Raiz Invest has an Android (and Android Wear) app, it’s now run as an Australian company. So, it’s Australian news, and they’re mobile focused. I can see no reasons why we wouldn’t report on this.
From my perspective it was an advertisement but with a little history makes sense. Was just wondering not accusing 🙂
Any sponsored content on Ausdroid is clearly marked. We take that very seriously.
It’s been widely reported among various tech sites and I’ve seen several reports on this yesterday. Nothing out of the ordinary since they are a mobile app focused investing company.
The new name is terrible though.
I have not seen it elsewhere myself. I have no problem with the story just the way it was written was like a press release, if it had of started referencing their previous posts then I would have understood immediately.
For a person reading it with no context it would mean there should be a post for every company that has an android app. I have an understanding now so all good.