Savings app Chip raises over £10m on Crowdcube

Savings app Chip has closed its Crowdcube campaign 27 days earlier than planned after going into overfunding just an hour after the campaign opened.

Chip’s initial target of £2m was raised solely by pre-registered investors, with £1m being raised just ten minutes after the fundraiser went live.

The fintech has since scooped up over £10.7m from just shy of 6,500 investors in only three days.

Of the £10.7m raised, £5m comes from the government-backed Future Fund, which provides companies with convertible loans from £125,000 up to £5m.

Following the closure of the round, Chip

“Perhaps the only downside to the overwhelming demand we saw with this round is that we ran out of allocation before the entire 25,000+ who requested-access were able to participate!”

The fintech also confirmed that it was working with Crowdcube to ensure the 20,000 people who missed out on the chance to invest will still get a chance to own a slice of Chip.

Chip joins a long list of fintechs to have accessed the pot of cash including alternative lender iwoca, fellow savings platform Plum, peer-to-peer lender Assetz Capital and proptech start-up Fronted.

The savings app launched the crowdfunding campaign to compliment an upcoming funding round, which AltFi understands could see the fintech valued at between £100-200m.

Since its launch in 2017, Chip has amassed over 250,000 users who have saved more than £165m through its platform.

Last week Simon Rabin, CEO and co-founder of Chip,told AltFi: “Crowdfunding has been a key part of the business to date and has enabled us to grow with our customers. It's an integral part of what we've become.”

Under lockdown, Chip saw record levels of growth as more people focused on their finances.

The AI-powered savings app said customers put away 103 per cent more money under lockdown, both through its auto-save function and manual deposits, with the average monthly manual deposit leaping up 356 per cent on last year.