Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Unifimoney?

Unifimoney is a multi-asset turnkey digital wealth management platform that serves Community Banks and Credit Unions to enable them to offer compelling investment services to their customers.  The Unifimoney platform today includes both passive and active investing in traditional equities and ETF's. Over 70 digital assets and precious metals including gold, silver and platinum.

Is Unifimoney a bank?

No, Unifimoney does not have its own bank charter but works with industry leaders across the financial and technology industry to bring the best of both worlds to create what we believe is a radically better way to bank.

Who do I contact about issues or concerns about my Unifimoney account?

Please email appsupport@unifi.money for any questions about your Unifimoney account.

What are the products that Unifimoney offers with their accounts?

Individual customers or members of banks and credit unions may have access to different services via Unifimoney. These may include but are not limited to a cash account, Robo advisory investment account, Self-elected investment account and a Precious Metals account.

How is Unifimoney different from a conventional bank?

The Big Banks spend billions of dollars on advertising each year and create special acquisition incentives and promotions to attract new customers. They have to, because they offer very poor value for customers' deposits; the separate accounts and functions make it purposefully complex to manage money. All these expenses — advertising, IRL branch costs, etc — have to be paid for; unfortunately, it's the customers that foot the bill through low-interest rates and high fees. A typical bank retains over 90% of what they make from people’s money; we aim to give 90% of the money back to users.

Unifimoney has been created to provide people with a better way to manage their money. We offer a single solution that includes everything you need for everyday money management — to Save, Spend and Invest. We've optimized your personal financial management to make it effortless: maximizing passive income via interest and cashback, and creating long-term financial assets through investment, automatically and by default. Unifimoney makes your money work for you — not the bank.

Why doesn’t my bank do what Unifimoney is doing?

A typical Big Bank keeps over 90% of the money they make from their consumers.; in contrast, we give back around 90% of that money. We can still be profitable, because our costs are a fraction of the costs of the Big Banks. We don’t have expensive real estate to manage, we don’t have hundreds of thousands of employees, and we don’t buy private jets. Our tech is bang up to date, so we don’t waste money keeping old tech going and we don’t have to waste money on marketing and deceptive "acquisition incentives." All the money we save lets us run our business incredibly efficiently and give more back to users while still being profitable. And our unique tools to optimize passive income on your savings means you make even more.

What interest rate does the average user earn?

Historically (e.g. last year), the average checking account in the US pays 0.05% and the average so-called “savings” account pays little more at 0.09%. Due to Covid-19, the Fed effective rate has rapidly fallen to around 0.05%. At Unifimoney, we help users’ money work for them and, even in a low interest market, we seek to offer the highest possible interest rate on our DDA checking account. Our high-yield checking account pays savings levels of interest — not the average “savings” account but closer to the Fed effective rate which you can find that info here. By having a single account with all your deposits in one place, you don’t lose interest by having funds sitting idly in a checking account paying little to no interest. Sadly, there is over $12 trillion sitting in accounts paying basically nothing right now.

What do you mean by robo-advisor?

Robo-advisors and robo-investment platforms are digital platforms that provide automated, algorithm-driven financial planning services with little to no human supervision. A typical robo-advisor collects information from clients about their financial situation and future goals through an online survey and then uses the data to offer advice and automatically invest client assets. By relying on technology, the costs of investing are kept low and human bias is removed. At Unifimoney, we default to robo-investing but if you want to actively manage your portfolio and trade yourself, you can do that as well. We try to offer the best of both worlds.

How does Unifimoney increase user returns?

We increase returns on your money through product design and pricing. A high-yield checking account means all your money is always earning interest. Automated dollar-cost averaging means that market timing risk is managed for investments. Because we keep our costs so low, we can afford to give more back to users — increasing deposit interest and cashback with fee waivers for meeting direct deposit and minimum balance requirements.

Why does Unifimoney provide a checkbook as an option?

We don’t want to put any barriers between our users and their money. There are still many situations, even today, when an old-fashioned checkbook is the easiest way to pay. For those moments, we provide the option of a checkbook.

What is passive income?

Passive income is earnings derived from activities in which a person is not actively involved. Unifimoney offers passive income in your personal finance in three ways:

  1. Deposit interest
  2. Cashback from credit and debit spending
  3. Dividends

We help you track these on an ongoing basis, as it’s important to know how hard your money is working for you. A young professional should aim to be making over $100 a month in passive income; then, we help you invest that for the future.

What is the Bank Cost Calculator?

One of the biggest marketing successes of the modern age of banking is that banks have somehow convinced us all banking is “free.” The second biggest “success” have been propagating the story that “savings” accounts help you save — at an average 0.09% interest, that’s just not the case. We created the Bank Cost Calculator to show people the real costs of managing their money at one of the Big Banks. You can enter where you bank and the approximate average amounts in your savings and checking account and we will provide you with an illustration of the real costs of keeping your money at your current Big Bank. 

Can I use my Unifimoney account like my current checking account?

Absolutely. Your Unifimoney account is a unique platform that provides you with a checking account, a credit and debit card and an investment account, all in one place. This makes it incredibly easy to see how your money is working as hard as possible for you. 

Will my money be as secure in my Unifimoney account as it is at my current bank?

Yes, we work with UMB Bank, one of the largest program administrators in the US (a program administrator is one that provides its services to other institutions as well as direct to consumers). Unifimoney is not a bank. To participate in the program, you must open an account at UMB Bank, n.a., Member FDIC, through which your funds will be placed in accounts at participating program banks. Your funds will be FDIC insured up to applicable limits while in transit through UMB Bank.  For more information on FDIC insurance coverage, please visit www.FDIC.gov. Customers are responsible for monitoring their total assets at each of the program banks to determine the extent of available FDIC insurance coverage in accordance with FDIC rules.

How does the credit card cashback work?

With a digital-only focus, Unifimoney is going to be most attractive to those who are very comfortable with technology. We have designed the credit card cashback to reward online and mobile spend, because it’s where our users are spending most of their money. The cashback is split in two — half is earned as you go and the other half is earned at the end of each quarter when minimum spends are reached. The reason we do this is that the card and account economics only work if Unifimoney is your primary card. In most credit card portfolios, a high proportion of cards are inactive, which means the most active users end up subsidizing the least active. By ensuring the benefits of our card are only enjoyed by active users, the entire membership benefits and it's fairer.

Why is there a minimum deposit required to open an account?

Our philosophy at Unifimoney is to run the business to the benefit of our users. The lower the costs, the more we can afford to give back. Some digital banks have sought to maximize account opening, while caring less about the proportion of those accounts that are actually used. Some estimates show that as low as 8% of digital banks' accounts are active. This is an incredibly inefficient and expensive way to do business and means that 8% of active accounts have to essentially pay the costs of the 92% that are inactive. To ensure we are as cost-efficient as possible, we only want people opening accounts with us that have a serious intent of using them like they're designed, so we have a minimum deposit to help achieve this level of engagement.

Why does Unifimoney charge monthly fees if minimum monthly direct deposits are not made?

Unifimoney is fee free to those users who use it as their primary bank account and meet the minimum activity levels, which include a minimum direct deposit of $6k a month within 4 months of account opening (to give time to change salary payments, etc.). To keep costs low and to benefit users as a whole, we charge for accounts that are not being used the way they are intended. In the traditional banking model, the best customers are actually subsidizing the least active — we think that’s unfair. We want our best users to benefit the most and inactive users to pay their own costs rather than being subsidized by others.

How are user’s investments insured?

We work with the leading white-label investment infrastructure company called Drivewealth. Drivewealth is member FINRA, SIPC, NFA. SOCII type 1, GDPR and CCPA compliant. Registered in all 50 U.S. states.

Is Unifimoney a bank?

No, Unifimoney does not have its own bank charter but works with industry leaders across the financial and technology industry to bring the best of both worlds to create what we believe is a radically better way to bank.

When will Unifimoney be available to the public?

We are in live Beta now and will gradually roll out to consumers. To be a part of the journey with us please sign up for the waitlist and if you want early access you can also apply for the Beta Test Group.