: Qoins offers a financial wellness platform intended to automate payments and savings for consumers looking to pay off debt. The company's platform uses its own payments technology and other saving methods on daily credit card purchases and calculates the savings to make an additional payment to the credit card debt, and other loans, enabling users to save money and be debt-free.
HQ Location & Year Founded: Atlanta, 2016
Founder: Christian Zimmerman, Co-founder and CEO, is a Latinx founder who previously worked in marketing and operations at organizations such as Coca-Cola Enterprises and Uber. Christian holds a degree in business administration from Georgia State University.
Funds Raised and VC Investors: $2.5 million from Front Row Fund, Rebel One Ventures, Revolution (Rise of the Rest) and angel investors
Where did the idea for Qoins originate?
The idea for Qoins originated after graduating from college. I come from a Latino background and prior to college I didn’t have a lot of financial literacy in terms of how to manage student loans, credit card debt and other personal financial matters. I left school with $35,000 of student loans. As I became smarter about the importance of managing finances, I realized the gap in the market for solutions that would help people like me with digital tools that would help apply savings toward paying off student and other types of debt.
What is the key problem that Qoins intends to solve?
We help consumers pay off debts faster by automating repayments. We are also now in the business of offering incentives to encourage smart personal financial decisions.
How are you most differentiated as a service?
We help our users to set money aside and facilitate payments directly to lenders. The Qoins debit card offers rewards and allows people to link to specific goals in the Qoins app. If paying off debt, for example, one can get additional savings from purchases and earn up to 10% cash back on that goal.
What are the company’s key accomplishments to date?
We have helped 100,000 customers to pay off more than $50 million in debt. More than 10,000 people are actively using our app and debit card today. We were also named by Forbes on their 30 for 30 Social Impact list in 2021.
What lies ahead in the plans for Qoins?
Our goals for the next two years are to launch more products and features for our debit card, as well as to start building relationships with larger corporations and debt management advisors, as well as to offer financial counseling. We expect to become an employee benefit as a service as well.
Ron’s Take
A commonly noticed Achilles Heel of American school curricula is the lack of education around personal finances and basic economics. Few young adults coming out of high school or even college really understand how to think about managing cash and avoiding the pitfalls of debt. And yet with college enrollment costs continuing to soar well above the rate of inflation, young adults are faced with the pressure of a mountain of debt just when their career is getting started and they have minimal savings to provide a buffer. Qoins offers an important tool that helps overcome these challenges and is likely to help tens of thousands more people get out of debt in the years to come.