Note: the following article will be mainly targeted at a Belgian audience.
Introduction
It is quite an interesting time to be alive, in many ways. As the pandemic is raging on in Europe and people are confined to their homes for the second time in 2020, I have the luxury of having a job which allows me to work from home. While I am fully aware that others are not that lucky, for me, it has been quite a blessing. Gone are my long and frustrating commutes to Brussels. While I do tend to work a bit longer hours than usually at the office, it has the upside that I have a lot of extra time on my hands which I can spend on either sleep or doing something more productive.
Currently, I’m employed in the financial sector (in IT). A bit more than a month ago, I was asked to give a training. As the session (digitally) came to a close, in the Q&A a small debate ensued concerning FinTechs. One of the members in the audience mentioned one that was completely new for me: Cake.
What is a FinTech?
For those new to the concept of a ‘FinTech’, it is a bit of buzzword these days but it – broadly – is a concept that encompasses a new innovation or technology that looks to improve or shake up the more traditional way of going about finance & banking. Think about mobile-only banks, or FinTechs offering investment advice based on AI. There are a lot of them that have spawned up the last years. As a customer, this is great news. It gives you a wide arrange of choice as well as new functionalities. It also nudges for instance traditional banks to step up their game.
Anyway, back to Cake. The next day I looked up this application and was quite intrigued. Basically, their aim is twofold:
- Improve the view you have on your finances
- Share a part of their revenue with you
Both of which are very much aligned to the interests of this website (sharing ways to boost your income and cutting down on your expenses), which is why I’d thought it would make for a nice article.
How does it work?
Cake links their application with that of your bank(s). It retrieves the data (and honestly this goes all quite fast without too much hassle) and then processes it, churning out nice and useful overviews to monitor. Then, on a monthly basis, you get a (small) sum wired over to your bank account. Last month for me, this was 1,27 euro. Some people get more, it depends from month to month, but at least it is a nice very low effort way to get some money coming in. You could even consider it as passive income. And I have to say, the app works fluently.
What’s in it for them?
By linking the accounts, Cake acquires (a lot) of data and manages to sell & profit on this. Note that this data is anonymized. Data is worth something these days, but Cake is one of the only apps I’ve seen so far that actually shares the benefit of having your data back with you in a monetary way.
Of course, I’ll keep using and monitoring this app, as now this testimonial is based on only a rather short period of time, but so far I am sold. Kudos to Davy Kestens & his team at Cake.
Check out their website here. They also have quite an interesting blog that you can check out.
Did you already try Cake? What are your experiences with it? Feel free to share below in the comments section!
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