Kiddie Kredit, a Miami-based startup founded by Evan Leaphart, has raised $1.4 million in funding to expand the reach of its financial literacy app.
Investors include Nueterra Capital, Plain Sight Capital, Fuerza Ventures, Verve Capital, and former pro athletes Dwyane Wade and Baron Davis.
“I was drawn to what Evan and team are working on with Kiddie Kredit. It’s important to give kids a head start and especially on the topic of credit,” said Dwyane Wade, according to Refresh Miami.
teaching credit through chores
The mobile app teaches kids aged 4 to 12 the basics of credit in a fun, gamified way by assigning tasks and chores that earn them points towards their kredit score.
Evan Leaphart journey through college, apartment hunting, unemployment, and business ups and downs showed him how much a credit score can impact life’s options. After rebuilding his own credit, he decided to teach kids in South Florida financial basics, including the credit system.
Kiddie Kredit is an extension of this work, and reportedly, the app has been used by more than 12,000 families since its launch in 2019.
Monetizing through partnerships
Although the Kiddie Kredit app does not monetize directly through families, it has partnered with Equifax to add advertising of the Equifax Family Plan to the parent side of the app. Partner organizations can also interact directly with the app, adding activities and rewards, and sending push notifications to parents.
“Most importantly, organizations can unlock for families this entire financial literacy journey of over 250 hours of content that meets multiple National Financial Literacy Standards,” Leaphart told Refresh Miami.
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Kiddie Kredit previously participated in Amazon’s Black Founders Build with Alexa cohort 2022, Google for Startups’ Black Founders Fund 2022, and EndeavorLAB cohort 2021.
The app began generating revenues in 2021, growing 150% between 2021 and 2022, all organically with no marketing budget.
Growing with Gen Alpha
Kiddie Kredit is currently exploring how it can expand into the teen space, such as incorporating a follow-on true credit product for its growing userbase.
“We want to own the space of Generation Alpha. What we want to be is the domain experts within that space,” Leaphart said.
“We’re with them on that journey.”
