Education: Gaming aims to take the fear out of finance

An imaginary world filled with fantasy creatures is helping children learn about the value of money. Using the app, Green$treets: Unleash the Loot!, they can earn virtual cash by planting a garden or purchase decorations for a tree house while learning basic financial concepts such as earning money, making spending decisions, saving and budgeting.

The app is an attempt to overcome the biggest hurdle facing those wanting to increase consumers’ grasp of money management – the image many people have that personal finance is stressful and dull.

“The fundamental problem is that it’s just not very interesting,” says Mark Guinibert, a partner at KPMG, the consultancy.

It is a view shared by Jason Alderman, who runs the global financial education programmes at Visa, the credit card company. “One of the biggest challenges of financial literacy, regardless of what technology you’re using, is that the combination of fear, shame and boredom is a lethal cocktail,” he says.

As a result, the apps and games that Visa is now designing as part of its financial literacy programmes include one that taps into the popularity of sport. Financial Soccer (called Financial Football in some markets) is a free online video game that tests players’ financial management skills.

Mr Alderman argues that technology can encourage people who might otherwise shy away from the subject to start thinking about how to manage their money. “There is no app that can make you financially literate,” he says. “But it can be a gateway to realising that the subject doesn’t need to be terrifying.”

Mobile and game technologies can add an element of fun to help consumers improve their money management skills.

In the US, for example, PNC Bank has created a mobile phone app to make saving money more entertaining. The Punch the Pig app allows customers to transfer money from their current to their savings account automatically whenever they punch (by shaking their phone) the piggy bank on the screen.

“ ‘Gamification’ is a way of getting people to save and put money away,” says Mr Guinibert. “There’s something in our brains that responds to that kind of addictive behaviour.”

Familiarity plays a role, too, a factor that the Green$treets app taps into, since its creatures are the creations of Tom Hester, character designer for Shrek, the computer-animated film franchise.

Even in very different settings, similar principles apply. When Opportunity International – which provides poor communities in developing countries with financial services – designs its education programmes, it taps into popular culture.

In Uganda, where soap operas are widely watched, it creates dramas with similar plot lines that include messages about things such as the importance of having savings accounts. The organisation is starting to equip its loan officers with tablets, and it sees the potential of taking these messages to a larger number of people.

“It’s about not trying to introduce something new but using what is already working well,” says Rosa Wang, director of mobile money at Opportunity International.

Mobile devices offer other advantages when it comes to financial literacy – intimacy. “Money management concerns some of the most private information we have,” says Mr Alderman. “And a phone is a screen just for you.”

For microfinance institutions, the mobile phone is a way of helping clients keep on track with loan repayments. Opportunity International is among those using text message notifications to borrowers’ as reminders that their payments are due.

If mobile technology is a channel for delivering financial information that people can access in private, social media is a highly public technology.

For this reason, Mark Guinibert believes banks will have to tread carefully when using social media as a money management tool. “People find it hard enough to talk to their friends about this stuff,” he says.

Nevertheless, some banks are experimenting with social media as a means of increasing financial literacy. For Visa, the technology provides a way of using shared concerns to raise awareness of the importance of budgeting.

In the US, the company’s Tooth Fairy app and Facebook calculator help parents – who often worry about how much money to leave for children after they lose a tooth – decide on the appropriate amount by letting them see what other families have left under their child’s pillow.

Meanwhile, in India, ICICI Bank is using Facebook to encourage savings among younger customers. With an iWish account, customers can choose when and how much to deposit. They can post their savings goals on a Facebook page so that their friends and family can track the saver’s progress and make contributions from their own accounts.

It is perhaps no surprise that ICICI Bank has targeted younger customers with its iWish account. As the younger generation of digital natives become bank clients, they are likely to be less reluctant than older people to use social media to discuss their personal finances.

“With a younger, more online, more confident user base, it is viable,” says Mr Guinibert. “It might not happen today, but it is going to happen.”