Is my money safe at a bank I have never heard of?
It is held at Dale Street under the same rules and deposit insurance as every chartered bank. Fame is not one of the rules.
A money app and a steel card
A bank account, except we're not a bank.
The money sits at a bank. The app sits in front of it. The card weighs 17 grams. That is the whole product. It started with a pencil.
Spending, held at Dale Street
$2,314.17
Savings $611.40 · updated 1 second ago
- Birchmoor Coffee 7:48 am. Rounded to $5.00. $4.60
- Round-up to savings The forty cents from the coffee. $0.40
- Gullwing Print Co., payroll Posted when it landed. +$1,912.40
- City transit pass Monthly. Same as last month. $98.00
01 The pencil
My father kept a paper register.
Every cheque went into it in pencil, in the car park, before he started the engine. One rule, thirty-one years: the pencil is right until the bank proves otherwise.
Twice, the bank was wrong. He brought it up at dinner for the rest of his life.
DateDescriptionAmountBalance
3/02Gutters46.102,468.27
3/04Coffee4.602,463.67
3/09Gas31.402,432.27
3/14Payroll+1,912.404,344.67
3/14Rent1,450.002,894.67
3/16Groceries82.142,812.53
3/18Phone54.002,758.53
3/19Bank says2,755.53
02 The card
The card weighs 17 grams. The weight is the feature.
Plastic weighs about five grams. Steel weighs 17. Set it down on a table and at least one person looks over. We have tested this in restaurants.
Here is what the steel does that plastic does not: nothing.
| Weight | 17 g |
|---|---|
| Material | Stainless steel, brushed |
| Chip | Yes. The standard kind. |
| Contactless | Yes |
| Numbers on the front | None. They are in the app. |
| What it does that plastic does not | Nothing. It is heavier. |
03 Round-ups
Forty cents a coffee. Here is exactly what that comes to.
Each payment rounds up to the next dollar and the difference moves to savings. Most apps explain this with a photograph of a jar. We would rather show the arithmetic.
$104 is not a retirement.
It is a winter coat in the January sale, or the annual fee a lot of steel cards charge. It is not a reason to buy a sixth coffee.
Round-up receipt
One coffee$4.60
Rounds up to$5.00
The difference$0.40
Five a week$2.00
Fifty-two weeks$104.00
04 Fees
No fees. Here is who is paying instead.
When you tap, the shop pays the card network a small percentage of the sale, and a share of it reaches us. You see a free app and a heavy card.
If you spend nothing, we earn nothing.
| For | What you pay | What the merchant pays | What the partner bank earns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keeping the account open | Nothing. | Nothing. | Nothing directly. It gets to hold your deposits. |
| Tapping the card | Nothing. | A small percentage of the sale, to the card network. Part of it reaches us. | A smaller part of the same slice. |
| Holding your money | Nothing. | Nothing. | What any bank earns on deposits. |
| The steel card | Nothing for the first one. $20 to replace it. | Nothing. | Nothing. |
| Cash from a machine | Nothing from us. The machine's owner may charge, and the app shows it first. | Nothing. | Nothing. |
05 The partner bank
Where your money actually is
The app is a screen.
Your money is at Dale Street Trust Company, chartered 1911, in a town of six thousand. You have never heard of it. Neither had we, until the lawyers introduced us.
Dale Street holds the deposits and answers to the regulators. Haversack builds the app and answers to you. A charter takes years. We wanted to post a card this decade.
You
Holds: 17 grams of steel
Haversack
Holds: a screen and a very good list
Dale Street Trust Company
Holds: the money
06 Disclosures
Disclosures, which we think are the best part
Most apps set these in grey nine-point type at the foot of the page and hope. Ours are in the font we use for amounts.
-
01
Haversack is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Dale Street Trust Company. It also says so on the back of the card, in a size you can read.
-
02
The card is issued by Dale Street under licence from a card network whose mark appears on it. It works wherever that mark is accepted, which is most places and not all places.
-
03
Round-ups move your own money from spending to savings. They do not create money. Nothing in this app creates money, and we would be suspicious of an app that said it did.
-
04
Any interest on savings is paid by Dale Street at a rate Dale Street sets and may change. We do not print it here because it would be a different number by the time you read it.
07 Questions
Five questions people ask, and what we say
Why is the card so heavy?
Because steel is heavy. We could have made it lighter and chose not to. You will know why the first time you set it down.
What if I lose it?
Freeze it in two taps. A new one is $20, the steel plus postage. We do not earn money on your bad day.
Do you sell my data?
No. We earn money when you tap the card. We do not need a second business, and the first one is easier to explain at dinner.
Why trust a company that keeps saying it is not a bank?
Because the alternative lets you assume it is one. We would rather say where the money is than be vague in a larger font.
08 The pencil, again
The pencil did not need a partner bank.
His register told him, before he spent the money, whether he had the money. In pencil, in a car park, with no app and no steel.
Haversack does the same in about a second, subtraction done, forty cents already moved. It took a chartered bank, a card network and 17 grams of steel to match one man with a pencil.
He would have found that funny. Then he would have checked our arithmetic.
His register
3/04Coffee4.602,463.67
Haversack, 7:48 am
- Birchmoor Coffee Rounded to $5.00. $4.60
- Round-up to savings Already moved. $0.40