The Georgetown University Alumni and Student Federal Credit Union will soon release a mobile financial planning platform called GWallet, which will be integrated into GUASFCU’s existing mobile app offered to Credit Union clients.
The GUASFCU app currently gives users the ability to check balances, transfer funds, and deposit checks remotely. According to GUASFCU Chief Executive Officer Chris Kelly (COL ‘14), the addition of GWallet will allow clients to create budgets, develop spending goals, and track all transactions made with their GUASFCU accounts. Credit cards and other bank accounts can also be monitored through the GWallet app in addition to a client’s GUASFCU account.
“Adding these services is a natural step for us because it will modernize our services and move towards mak[ing] Georgetown as financially literate as possible,” said Chief Financial Officer Michael Matuozzi (MSB ‘14).
According to Kelly, GWallet is a two-year project in the making, developed in conjunction with Geezeo, a company that provides similar personal financial management platforms to money management organizations. GUASFCU originally intended to incorporate Mint, a mobile financial planning tool with over 10 million users. After a contractual dispute, however, between the Credit Union’s core processor and Intuit Inc., the owner of Mint.com, GUASFCU began planning its own financial planning tool which became GWallet.
Kelly believes that GWallet will help push GUAFSCU toward a branchless model beyond the sphere of Georgetown’s physical location through which its clients can “manage [their] finances from anywhere in the world.”
Although the contract with Geezeo will cost the Credit Union subscription service expenses, the service and app will remain free for download and use by clients from both the Apple and Android application stores.
“Learning to manage your finances is something that goes hand in hand with being in college, and we think that students will definitely be very receptive to using it,” Matuozzi said.
