Qapital Review 2021

What is Qapital?

Qapital is a personal finance app that is designed to help you spend smarter and save more of your hard-earned money. Qapital connects to your bank account and moves small amounts into your savings over time using a mixture of gamified and goal-based approaches. Most people struggle with saving large amounts of money, which is why Qapital aims to make small savings add up over time to help you reach your savings goals. Qapital has a number of rules to help you save in the way you want to and offers three membership tiers and account types for savings, investing, and checking.

Qapital Overall Rating: 4.5 ★ / 5.0 ★

Qapital gets an overall rating of 4.5 stars because it is one of the best tools that can help you reach your savings goals. It allows you to save money on your terms with its unlimited sub-accounts and creative rules. The genius behind Qapital is the set it and forget it approach that allows you to set up the rules and then let the app do all the hard work of saving for you. If you are looking to set up a sinking fund or an emergency fund, Qapital might be the perfect tool for you. Qapital also offers goal-based investment accounts where you can invest in robo-advised portfolios. Lastly, Qapital has a spending account that comes with a debit card. This is super handy because you can get access to your money in Qapital much quicker. Qapital gets high ratings for helping many Americans to automate and build up savings.

Pros & Cons of Qapital

Pros of Qapital

• Creative and customizable rules to help you automate savings 
• Unlimited micro-savings accounts that enable you to split money between various goals
• Save users on average between $1,500 and $4,300 a year
• Investment account with a robo advisor
• Spending account with a debit card
• Personalized budgeting and spending recommendations

Cons of Qapital

• Low-interest rate on FDIC insured accounts
• Cost to use, no free version 
• No tax-advantaged retirement account options

User Experience and Ease of Use: 4.7 ★

Qapital is extremely easy to set up and get started. It is a bank, so you will have to provide some personal information, and you are required to link your existing checking account to Qapital’s app. The onboarding process is extremely easy and is completed entirely online. 

Qapital has an amazing user experience. Within Qapital’s app you can fully customize your savings goals. With each goal you set, you can use any of Qapital’s long list of pre-built rules to determine how you are going to save your money. 

Here’s a quick guide to Qapital’s rules according to their website:

Moves: Tie your personal fitness goals to your financial goals. Reward yourself with a buck or two of savings every time you walk, bike or run. You’ll feel twice as good when you finish your workout.

The Guilty Pleasure Rule: We all need our morning coffee. Don’t cut it out, activate the Guilty Pleasure Rule and save money every time you buy your iced with skim or double shot of espresso. You can make any place a Guilty Pleasure, it’s up to you.

The Round-Up Rule: This is the most popular rule. Qapital users save an average of $44 a month, just by rounding up their change. Round up your change to the nearest $2 or $3 and watch it add up faster.

The Spend Less Rule: Do you always spend $50 at the supermarket? Set the Spend Less rule and then spend $40 the next time you shop. Viola!  That $10 is automatically deposited in your Qapital savings account. It pays to come in under budget.

Set and Forget: Just set the app to automatically deposit money into your Qapital savings account once a week. Start with just $10 a week and see if you even miss it.

The 52 Week Rule: What would you do with an extra $1,378 a year? Our 52 Week Rule automates the process of saving $1 on week one, $2 on week two, $3 on week three for an entire year.

Freelancer Rule: This  simple solution helps freelancers and independent workers stay on top of their taxes and avoid trouble with the IRS. The Rule automatically transfers a percentage of every deposit over $100 into your FDIC-insured Qapital account.

IFTTT: Qapital is the first personal finance app that lets you save with IFTTT (If This Then That), the wondrous web service that’s been dubbed “digital duct tape.” IFTTT lets you link your Qapital account with many of your favorite mobile apps. You can save with a tweet, an Instagram or when you hit your step goal with FitBit. Really!

As you can see Qapital has a unique set of ways to help you pay yourself first and save your money. It is a powerful tool that will help you to stock away enough for the things you truly want. 

Qapital also gives you the ability to save into a shared goal with other Qapital users. This allows for multiple people to save for the same goal, which can be super helpful for couples that keep their finances separate or friends that want to save towards mutual goals. 

The other two Qapital accounts (investment and spend) are also very easy to setup and use. For Invest, you complete a quick questionnaire and Qapital automatically sets you up an investment portfolio based on your specific goals, timeline, and risk tolerance.  

For Qapital spend, they mail you a debit card that takes about 10 business days to get and start spending.

Qapital Pricing: 4.0 ★

The reason for the lower rating here is because Qapital does not have a free version like many other personal savings apps. However, they do offer the three low-cost account tiers shown above. 

The Basic tier costs $3.00 per month and on average helps to increase savings by $1,500 a year. Here are the features that are included in the Basic package: 

• Create unlimited, personalized savings goals
• Make fun rules to trigger automatic savings 
• Transfer money between goals easily 
• FDIC Insured up to $250,0000

This may be your best option if you are simply looking to put more money into a savings account. 

The second offering, Complete, costs $6 per month. On average Complete users save $4,300 a year, which is a significant jump from the average cost savings of Basic users. This is right for you if you want the savings, investing, and spending capabilities all withing your Qapital account. 

The highest tiered offering is Master, which costs users $12 per month. On average Master users save $5,000 a year. This package is a bit expensive and does not provide much more than the Complete package outside of access to educational content and first access to new features.

Qapital Customer Service: 4.0 ★

Qapital customer service channels are also lacking compared to other apps and tools. The only way you are able to contact Qapital is by direct message within the app or by emailing their support team. Qapital could definitely improve its options to contact customer support, especially for urgent issues that may require immediate assistance or more of a human touch. 

When I used their email and mobile support, the Qapital support team got back to me within a day and was able to resolve my problem, but that may not always be the case for certain circumstances.

Qapital Innovation: 4.8 ★

Qapital has done an awesome job of helping people to save money in more creative ways compared to many other existing tools and apps. Their platform started with innovative ways designed to help you save more money by tailoring the savings experience specific to your goals and the rules you set up. Since then, Qapital has continued to innovate by introducing more technology and accounts to help with spending habits, budgeting, education, and investing goals. Qapital has proven that they are committed to growing and innovating to serve their customers and their financial needs.

Qapital Offerings: 4.5 ★

Spending Account

This account comes with a debit card where you can transfer your goals savings to spend when the time comes that you need the money or reach your goal. Qapital can also better analyze your spending habits and make recommendations to help you budget better and spend less. 

Invest Goals

With the investment account, you complete a questionnaire and Qapital does the rest by creating an investment portfolio based on your risk tolerance and investing timeline. You can even set up rules the same way as the savings goals to automatically invest. This is great because it helps you to save more money over time. 

Account Limitations

A couple of drawbacks are that Qapital does not offer any retirement accounts and has a fairly low yield on savings accounts compared to most other online savings providers. You will have to look elsewhere for long-term retirement accounts that have tax-advantaged features.

Qapital Security: 4.9 ★ 

Qapital has top of the line security. The money you put into their savings and spending account is FDIC insured for up to $250,000. Qapital is secured with the latest and strongest SSL (Security Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption standards. Bank communication is only transmitted over encrypted end points, and your personal info like Social Security Numbers and login information is never stored on Qapital Servers.

Qapital also has passcode access, fingerprint I.D., and remote lock for their debit card. They have industry standard account verification. Qapital takes securing your data and money seriously. 

Is Qapital Right For You?

Qapital is great for you if you are looking for better ways to save more money. It is perfect for your short-term and mid-term savings goals. Your long-term retirement savings is better suited somewhere that has retirement accounts. If you have struggled to save money in the past, or you would like your savings to be more organized then Qapital is for you with its fully customizable goals and savings rules. You can use Qapital for everything from automating your savings, incentivizing you to stop a bad habit, to putting a percent of your income towards a goal. It’s easy because you set it up and then forget about it. Qapital also has great robo investment options and a spending account for your spending needs.