Americans love video games: Roughly 70% of the population plays games on some kind of device, according to gaming industry studies. Consider the online shoot-em-up Fortnite, which currently boasts some 250 million players.
“When you look at the Fortnite numbers alone, that’s an insane amount of people playing that game all the time,” said Walter Cruttenden, the co-founder of Acorns.
Such volume hasn’t convinced financial services to partner with the video game industry, even as banks have gamified certain aspects of their savings and personal finance management apps.
But Cruttenden is planting a flag deeper into this area with Blast, the game-based savings app he launched last year.
The app,
Blast users save set amounts of money linked to a gaming app. The money is saved according to length of gameplay or number of wins.
The Newport Beach, Calif.-based company previously was limited to rewarding mobile game players for their gameplay sessions.
“It gives you another reason to play a game and it’s all geared towards incentvizing a person to save a little bit of money,” Cruttenden said.
To mark the dive into PC gaming, Blast will have a presence later this week at TwitchCon, a popular industry gathering for the video streaming service owned by Amazon.
Blast will integrate itself with some of the most popular PC video games on the market such as Fortnite, Counterstrike and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.
Cruttenden indicated the move to PC gaming could be lucrative for Blast.
A good portion of Fortnite players are between 18- and 24-years-old, a target demographic for Blast.
“If we could get just 1% of that, that’s definitely a good start for us in PC gaming,” Cruttenden said.
He added that’s one reason why Blast will have a presence this week with a booth at TwitchCon.
“We’re sort of excited and yet a little worried about launching this at TwitchCon,” Cruttenden said. “These game communities are so big, so if one of them goes kind of nuts…I hope our servers can withstand it. We’ll figure it out.”
Cruttenden said Blast’s next target could be console gaming, but indicated that market is more complicated because it takes a deeper degree of partnerships to align with the companies publishing those games.
PC gamers can earn rewards when they link their Blast account to Steam, which is the most popular video game digital distribution platform for the PC.
“You would just log into your Steam account like you normally would and we’ll automatically track certain triggers that lead to a reward based on the game you play,” Cruttenden said.
Blast bases rewards on players reaching certain milestones over the course of their normal gameplay sessions. Those milestones could be anything from solving a puzzle to defeating a certain amount of enemies.
With the iOS launch, Blast is adding some new features to its platform such as specific savings goals, and a rewards system called Goal Boosts that enables players to earn “plasma” for playing games.
Blast users then can redeem the plasma for real-world money (anywhere between 50 cents and $2) that is transferred into the federally-insured savings account with 2% APY.
Gamers also can link a checking account, credit or debit card to Blast and transfer money to the account at any point.
Cruttenden declined to say how many users were already signed up with Blast, other than to say they've had modest growth in the past year.
Lane Martin, a partner at Capco, said these types of savings accounts continue to be popular with consumers because there’s essentially no risk to them.
“Savings products are hot and getting hotter as banks and non-banks are able to acquire deposits on lower cost infrastructures while offering rates that incent customers to act,” he said.
“Customers are re-directing their savings out of big brand coffers to achieve yields that are regularly [10 times higher than the average]; this is worth the five minutes it takes to open an account.”
Cruttenden also declined to name the bank holding the deposits other than to say it’s a “top five” bank in the U.S.
When asked about the benefit to that bank aligning itself with Blast, Cruttenden said it’s a creative way for that particular institution to add deposit accounts.
“They see us as one omnibus account,” he said. “They find it economical because they’re managing one account that’s comprised of multiple accounts that we’re managing on our end.”
Banks have dabbled in offering gaming apps to customers, but most have been developed in-house. Recently, Synchrony Financial offered an
Cruttenden said it was time for financial services to stop thinking of video games as kids’ stuff, as the average age of a gamer is now 34.
“I grew up in the financial services business where we wore suits and were told to take it very seriously,” Cruttenden said. “Banking and video games have been two separate worlds, but as gaming innovates like every other industry, there are people smart enough out there to make it really fun and easy to save.”
