We are excited to announce our investment in Copper Banking alongside Jack Brody, Mana Ventures, and Western Technology Investments.

It’s no secret that there is a widespread lack of access to financial literacy in the United States. Millions of teenagers grow up without the resources to learn about financial principles from compound interest to a diversified portfolio. One can see this clearly in the data: 20 percent of American teens fail to meet the level of being considered financially literate. Further, only 16.4% of students nationwide are required to take a personal finance course to graduate high school. Our education system, both public and private, has driven the core concepts of math, science, and history but fails to deliver the fundamentals of personal finance at shocking rates. For a large percentage this results in uninformed credit decisions resulting in unsurmountable debt, low to no retirement savings and countless other avoidable financial missteps down the line.

The Copper Banking team has built a financial technology platform that lets teens learn through their bank and through their interactions transferring money to and from their parents and their friends.

Led by Eddie Behringer and Stefan Berglund, Copper Banking is a new digital bank that provides teens access to the digital economy while helping them build their financial skills for the future. Copper's approach is unique; create virality by providing an amazing user experience for the teen end user instead of just targeting parents. Teens gain independence, learn valuable money skills, and gain insight into how they save, send, and spend their money. On the other side, parents can easily send their kids money, learn how to talk to them about financial concepts, prepare them for their future, and have peace of mind with bank-level security and FDIC protection.

Before launching Copper Banking, Eddie and Stefan founded the online fundraising platform Snap! Raise to simplify the fundraising process for schools, groups and organizations looking to fundraise for their cause. They quickly identified through their direct work with high schools that these establishments and the private sector were leaving teens unprepared for the trials and tribulations of an increasingly complex financial landscape.

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Along with Eddie and Stefan’s deep understanding of how to build products for and gain distribution to teenagers, they have assembled a leadership team of fintech experts from PayPal, Inuit, and Stripe. They have already deployed a debit card that is being used by real users as a part of the beta rollout that began in April. During beta testing this past spring, Copper has proven their ability to successfully gain school-wide penetration within high schools and built an advisory board of teens that are working alongside product and program development to ensure that Copper provides a successful and authentic way to educate teens about money.

The goal of Copper is clear. Give teens practical hands-on financial education that they need to save, learn, and grow their money both now and in the future. We’re very excited to work with Eddie and Stefan and support the company along their mission of creating a more financially literate generation.