This article first appeared in Personal Wealth, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on August 19, 2019 - August 25, 2019

Good money habits are best formed in early childhood. But while most parents want their children to be good at managing their cash in the future, many do not know how or where to start. Mellow, a personal finance and education app, was created to tackle this problem.

Still in its beta form, the app is Asia’s first personal finance solution for families. The financial activities of both parent and child are synced in a system that integrates finance, education and family values on a single platform.

The app is downloaded by both parent and child. There are two interfaces provided — one for each of them. After signing up, parents can connect their account with that of their children.

The major features of the app include savings, wish list, earnings, expenses, analytics and learning. While parents can list financial rewards or record transactions on the app, they will not be able to transfer real money.

One of the features that children can use is to record their savings from the allowance they receive from their parents. Then, parents can set the amount of interest the children can earn on their savings, which is automatically calculated and recorded by the app.

With its goal-based saving feature, children can add a “wish” or a goal to save towards and be able to see their progress on the app. For example, the goal could be to “buy a Pokemon game”. Mellow will then advise them as to whether they should save more or spend less each month to achieve their goals.

To allow their children to earn money, parents can list tasks — together with the reward the child would get by completing them — on Mellow. For example, parents can issue a “water the plants” task for RM2. When the task has been completed, the parent will be able to approve of the task, upon which the reward will be automatically reflected in the child’s account.

Apart from providing a journal for the children to record their expenses, the app also presents both parent and child with analytics on the child’s transactions, financial activity trends and savings progress.

Developed in Hong Kong, Mellow is one of the top 12 start-ups on Alibaba’s Jumpstarter programme. It won an award under the universities category at the Fintech Awards 2018, organised by financial news agency Et Net. Mellow is currently one of Hong Kong Cyberport’s incubatees.

The beta version of the app can be downloaded for free from Google Play or the App Store.

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