Are you looking for a banking option that fits everyone in your family? Would you like to boost your financial literacy skills together? Then you have to check out our Crew review to learn more about a fintech company that is shaking up the family finance space.
What Is Crew?
Crew is a financial technology company that offers banking services for families. Families can set up high-interest savings and checking accounts. (That’s right! The checking accounts pay high interest!)
Some key features of Crew that are already making waves include:
- No fees
- No minimum deposits
- Customizable debit cards for kids
- Dedicated child logins
- Allowance splitting
- Real-time notifications on spending, transfers, and interest
That means that everyone in your family can manage their money together. It’s interactive enough for kids and teens to feel in control of their spending and savings. They even have dedicated logins to access the accounts. However, there are also enough parental controls to allow you to set up guardrails that work for your family. That’s because Crew accounts are joint accounts with kids added as authorized users. It’s just one way that they help you raise money-smart kids.
Crew is available both in the App Store and on Google Play.
Crew Review: Best Features
There are a lot of exciting features that you and your family can access when you set up a Crew account. Let’s explore some of our favorites.
High APY For Savings And Checking
Currently, Crew is paying 10 times the national average in interest on their accounts. If you want to make your kids’ money work for them, helping them earn more in interest is a really easy way to do that.
Though interest rates can and will change over time, you should note that Crew is currently paying 3.7% APY on their checking and savings accounts.
Customizable Debit Card
There are other companies that offer debit cards for kids. However, a Crew debit card actually comes with the name on it. Debit cards are tied to checking accounts and are available to all family members.
Easy-to-Use App
The app is available to both Apple and Android users. It’s very highly rated on the App Store and on Google Play.
We found it very easy to navigate the Crew app. The streamlined features make it very intuitive for people of all ages. Plus, your financial numbers are clearly displayed. That means that there shouldn’t be any surprises when it comes to spending or saving.
Pockets Features
It’s no secret that Ally is one of our favorite banks. That’s in no small part due to the “buckets” features that make it so easy to set goals and create sinking funds.
Crew allows you to set up “pockets” that function similarly. By using the “pockets”, you can create a sub-account and dedicate it to a particular savings goal. This is a really powerful way to talk to kids and teens about budgeting and planning ahead!
Excellent Customer Service
One thing that we always look for in a company is the level of service that they offer their customers. You might worry that since Crew is free, they are cutting corners when it comes to customer service. That is not the case. In fact, we find their customer service to be very impressive.
After downloading the Crew app, you can use the chat feature to get answers to your questions. Additionally, you can reach out to their customer service team over email at [email protected]. They also have social media accounts on X and Instagram.
Crew Review: Things To Consider
Before you make the switch to Crew for all your family banking needs, there are a few things you should consider.
New To The Finance Scene
There’s no denying that Crew is new to the finance scene. As a result, some people might be nervous about banking with them. It’s true that fintech startups like Copper haven’t been getting the best press lately.
However, one thing that Crew has going in their favor is who their partner bank is. Crew partners with Bangor Savings Bank to make sure that your money is FDIC-protected. It’s also worth noting that Bangor Savings has been around since 1852. While Crew might be new, Bangor Savings has withstood the test of time.
No Physical Branches
Are you someone who likes to be able to pop into a physical bank? Do your kids get a kick out of handing over their transaction slips? There are, unfortunately, no physical branches for Crew customers to use.
It’s one of the tradeoffs that allows them to offer such high interest rates and all of their services for no fees. However, if you are looking to bank in person, that could be a deal breaker.
No Easy Solution For Cash
Do grandparents send birthday cash? One of the biggest hangups with online banking is how difficult it is to manage cash. For most of us, our lives are virtually cashless. However, when it comes to kids and teens, we know they interact with a lot of cash. And there isn’t a great way to make cash work with Crew currently. One workaround that we commonly use is to have our kids give us the cash (that we then use for other spending) and then we deposit the money into their account.
However, Crew knows that this is an issue. As a result, they are working on possible solutions that might streamline the cash-to-savings account process.
No Mobile Check Deposit
If you get a physical check, there is no way for you to easily deposit that check through a mobile check deposit at this time. Crew founder, Gentry Davies says this feature is coming in the near future.
Crew Competitors
Crew offers plenty of features that make it a strong contender when it comes to banking for families. However, there are plenty of other companies that offer banking services and debit cards for kids. Here are three Crew contenders you might also consider.
Ally
Ally is a popular online bank. Though it doesn’t specifically market itself as a bank for families, it certainly is! Customers love the fact that Ally consistently offers some of the highest interest rates for their savings accounts. Plus, their bank accounts have no monthly fees or minimums. Your money is also FDIC-insured.
One of our favorite features of Ally is the bucket tool. Within a savings account, you can create buckets. These buckets are tied to different savings goals you might have. Whether you are saving for a birthday party, a vacation, a car, or something else entirely, these buckets allow you to visualize the power of savings.
As an added bonus, Ally also offers a variety of investment services. That means that you can use Ally to help your family learn how to invest. You can also use Ally to meet your own financial and investing goals thanks to their wide variety of products and services.
See how quickly you can open a kids bank account with Ally here! Also, we dive deeper in this full Ally Bank review as well.
Acorns Early
Acorns Early (FKA GoHenry) is a financial literacy app that also offers debit cards for kids. Is managing allowance feeling like a nightmare? Acorns Early can help! Parents can make regularly scheduled or one-time transfers to a kid's debit card. You can also use Acorns Early to set up parental controls and notifications tied to their spending.
Additionally, Acorns Early allows customers to create multiple savings goals. That way, you can help your children prioritize where their money goes. They can easily track their progress and start to understand the importance of savings.
Does your family practice save/spend/give principles? Acorns Early makes it easy for kids to make charitable donations. The app is even integrated with some charities.
Acorns Early costs $5 each month per child. That fee covers the debit card as well as the app and all the tools and resources offered within it.
Read our full Acorns Early review here!
FamZoo
FamZoo has been working to help kids and teens build their financial literacy for years. They were one of the first fintech tools designed to boost financial literacy in young people!
Families can customize FamZoo to fit their needs. They offer debit cards for kids of all ages and even have direct deposit options for teens. Customers can also create savings goals to help monitor their progress. FamZoo also helps with allowance. Not only are transfers easy to make, but parents can set up chore charts and even allow kids to call dibs on more chores for extra allowance.
There are tons of features within this robust app. You can use FamZoo starting at $5.99 per month. If you pay in advance for 6, 12, or 24 months, the cost decreases considerably!
Learn more about FamZoo here!
Crew Review FAQ
Now that you’ve read our Crew review, you might be wondering if this platform is too good to be true! We rounded up answers to some of the most common Crew questions. Read on to get a better understanding of how Crew works!
Is Crew FDIC Insured?
Your money is FDIC-insured. While it can seem a bit complicated, the short version is that yes, your money is safe. Crew teams up with Bangor Savings Bank to offer FDIC insurance to Crew customers. That means that your money is protected up to the federal limits. Joint accounts are protected up to $500,000, and individual accounts have FDIC insurance up to $250,000.
If you want to take a closer look, you can view the Crew Deposit Agreement.
What is the interest rate with Crew?
Currently, Crew offers competitive interest rates on its accounts. Accounts have a 3.7% APY. These rates may change at any time. The Crew website always has the most current interest rates posted.
What is Crew's relationship with Bangor Savings Bank?
Crew is a fintech company, not a bank. That means that the Crew platform partners with a traditional bank to provide its banking services. In this case, Crew works with Bangor Savings Bank. Bangor Savings Bank is an FDIC-insured bank.
Bangor Savings Bank is headquartered in Bangor, Maine, and has 69 branches across multiple states. Additionally, its founding dates back to 1852. Bangor Savings currently has over $7 billion in assets under their management. In short, Crew partnered with a reputable and qualified bank to offer you and your family banking services, like their Mastercard debit card.
Is Crew a Banking as a Service company?
Banking as a service, or BaaS, is when a business that isn’t a bank partners with a financial institution to offer banking services. By that definition, Crew is a Banking as a Service company.
What is your real-life experience with Crew?
Our family has been using Crew for the past 9 months and it has made our family banking experience so much easier. We got rid of our brick-and-mortar bank relationship with PNC and consolidated and eliminated dozens of our accounts with Ally.
Crew continues to add new features that make our family banking experience much easier.
Our kids (13 and 11 years old) love it too. They have the autonomy to spend where and when they need it with their own debit card. If they want to know how much money they have, checking on their own Crew app on their phones makes it super easy.
Final Thoughts On Our Crew Review
As parents of two kids, we are always looking for the best banking tools for families. When we find one, we're happy to go all-in. And that's what we've done with Crew. Since they've recently combined both checking and savings into one high yield account, we're earning more interest than we ever have before with Ally.
If you give Crew a try, you can land an extra 0.5% in interest for 3 months with our Marriage Kids and Money Crew link. We are excited about what Crew can offer our family, and we would love to hear whether or not you think Crew can help yours.
What do you think of our Crew review? What does banking look like for your family?
Please let us know in the comments below!
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