Touco helps users manage money better, supported by someone they trust

by Startacus Admin

The startup that's helping vulnerable adults get support from carers and family members to manage their finances

Managing finances is a headache that we all wish we didn’t have to deal with. It can be overwhelming at the best of times, and that only gets worse if you also have to deal with mental health issues or you live with dementia or any number of conditions or disabilities that will affect your ability to manage your finances.

Too many vulnerable people are taken advantage of by immoral businesses, by scams, even by their own family members who are tasked with helping with those finances. So what is a safe, accessible means of having someone help you, without opening you up to these dangers?

London-based fintech startup Touco has developed a platform for people to allow someone else a window into their finances and bank accounts.

This family member or carer can use this to protect them from financial harm while maintaining a healthy restriction on what the carer can see and do. The app connects to your bank account and helps you to set the trusted person and to personalise when that person will receive alerts about account activity. That carer will be able to view - and view only - your transaction feed to ensure things look okay, and alerts will let them know if the app itself spots something that doesn’t look right. This helps to ensure that you don’t overspend, fall into bad spending habits, or fall victim to fraud.

As well as this insight into your finances, your carer can be issued with a prepaid Care Card, which allows them to spend on your behalf, with everything they do recorded and every penny spent accounted for. In a COVID-19 world, where the vulnerable often rely on family, friends, or neighbours to do their shopping for them, and therefore often giving them their credit cards and PIN number, a card like this is invaluable.

And in any world where people need this kind of help, a platform like Touco is vitally important.

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• #finances
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Published on: 19th June 2020