Simple Launches Beta Of Shared Accounts

Simple, the online banking company,  is attempting to turn traditional bank accounts on its head, announcing on Thursday (Sept. 29) the launch of Simple Shared, which enables people to share accounts. Unlike a joint checking account, the new feature enables customers to keep their own accounts but switch over to shared accounts to collaborate on financial planning.

“At Simple, our mission is to help people feel confident with their money. So, we asked ourselves, could we create a way to share and manage money that would actually help improve relationships?” the company’s founder, Josh Reich, said in a blog post announcing the new feature. “Today, I’m excited to announce Simple Shared, an account designed with the complex intricacies of both banking and human relationships in mind. I founded Simple with a vision for a banking business that would only do well if it also did discernible good for its customers by solving complex money problems in human ways. With Shared, we wanted to create an account that brought transparency to how we spend and save in partnerships of any form.”

According to Simple, the product was designed to solve a few fundamental problems with today’s joint accounts, including enabling all sorts of people to manage their money together, not just a married couple or a parent and child. “We thought and heard our customers also wonder, what about the rest of us? There’s no one-size-fits-all for relationships, so there shouldn’t be one in banking. Shared accounts is designed for all partners, in spending, saving, doing and living together,” Reich said.

Shared was also designed so that users can have one account to share and two to use solo. That gives them flexibility to find a balance of independence, cooperation and transparency, the company said. Not to mention it enables the company to stand out from the traditional banking players and even online ones.  The new feature is in beta testing until the company is ready to formally roll it out. It said the beta of Shared comes after months of testing, the company noted.