On Valentine’s Day, fintech Neon Money Club launched an app to help financially like-minded people find love.
Potential suitors will find one unusual hurdle prior to swiping right, though: They must have at least a 675 credit score.
The app, dubbed Score, aims to highlight the importance of finances in romance. Financial woes are, after all, a common reason couples head for splitsville, so say the National Library of Medicine and Forbes Advisor.
Financial problems contribute to 38% of divorces, ranking as the third most common reason to call it quits, their data showed.
“When we really started digging into this topic, we found materials [published] by none other than the Federal Reserve and UCLA talking about how if you have stronger credit there, there's a probability you're going to have a stronger and longer relationship,” Neon Money Club and Score co-founder Luke Bailey said to Banking Dive. “We do think that correlates to a couple of things in real life: If you're managing your credit responsibly, maybe you can be relied upon to do other things responsibly, like take out the trash.
“We don’t think it’s the end-all-be-all, but we do think there are attributes of a financial responsible person that could carry over to a lasting and meaningful relationship,” he said.
The idea was born at last year’s AfroTech, a conference highlighting Black technology startups and leaders. Bailey and co-founder Jackie Liao were throwing a party, and they decided to ask attendants one simple question: What’s the minimum credit score someone needs to have for you to date them?
It makes sense that the founders would ask this question. Their financial wellness and investment platform launched in 2021, intent to remove the stigma around focusing on financial wellness. Last year, Neon Money Club launched an American Express credit card which allows users to swap credit card points for cash to invest in the U.S. stock market.
When prospective users apply to use Score, Neon Money Club does a soft credit check through one of the credit bureaus, which, if it’s 675 or over, it becomes their key to access the app.
The soft credit check will not impact their credit reports, Bailey said, and the score won’t be displayed on their profile. Once on the app, there’s no limit to who users can match with, so users in different credit tiers will be able to match with each other.
“We didn't want to tier people,” Bailey said. “We just wanted to give them a floor to start with. At banks, prime credit or good credit starts around 675. We we wanted folks to, on one side, be rewarded for their good behavior and taking care of their finances to be able to get into [Score].
“On the flip side of that, if you can't get into the app, we provide resources and partners you can go to to actually fix your credit,” Bailey said. “This is our way of catching both sides of the conversation and both sides of the audience, and rewarding them in the way that we could.”
The average credit score in the U.S. is 715, according to Experian. But 35% of Americans have credit scores under 675, the bureau said. Applicants in that realm, once locked out of by Score, are diverted to financial literacy resources, including credit building tool Grow Credit, to help increase their credit score.
“It was really important to us that we have a respectable partner for folks to go to that's going to take them seriously and help them to grow, because we want them to know [that] this isn't a joke,” Bailey said of Grow Credit, a credit building tool launched in 2018. “[We want to] make people more aware of their financial situation and then also have the resources to to improve it or to benefit from it.”
Score is only available for 90 days because, Bailey said, it was meant to be a conversation starter.
“Our core business is not running a dating app. People may dictate [that] we keep it longer, but right now, the plan is to just keep it for 90 days,” he said. “The response has been outstanding. The feedback has been insane. But it was really just meant to start a conversation, and we started a global conversation .... I think that’s a major feat.”
