Children’s financial app Greenlight signals next app iteration with family safety features • TechCrunch

Greenlight Financial Technology, a venture-backed fintech company focused on providing a debit card, banking app and financial education to children, added another layer to its subscription plan with the introduction of family safety features.

Greenlight Infinity, priced at $14.98 per month for the whole family, includes location sharing to see where anyone in the family is and do check-ins; SOS alerts to emergency contacts and/or 911 with one tap; and crash detection with automatic 911 dispatch wherein if a crash is detected while driving, driver and trip information is provided to emergency services.

Tim Sheehan, co-founder and CEO of Greenlight, explained that the driver for the new features aimed at safety was simply, “you need to know where your kids are and want to keep them safe.”

“I like the way we implemented the SOS alerts where you can choose to notify your family or the emergency services,” he added. “And if you click the SOS button and don’t choose whether to notify family or emergency services, they’ll just notify both by default. It’s so if you are in a really dangerous situation and can’t make that second decision.”

Along with that is the Greenlight Savings Reward, where teens can earn 5% on their savings.

Last year, the Atlanta-based company served more than 3 million parents and kids, and that has now increased to more than 5 million, according to the company.

It has also raised about $556.5 million in total funding since Greenlight was founded in 2014, according to Crunchbase data. This includes a $260 million Series D round in 2021 that doubled the company’s valuation to $2.3 billion.

Greenlight is not alone in turning venture capital heads toward the financial literacy for children and parents space. For example, last year, teen digital banking service Step raised $200 million in a Series C round and this week borrowed $300 million in debt financing to launch a crypto investing feature. Similarly last month, Stack raised $2.7 million for its cryptocurrency education and trading app.