Savings app Chip shakes up its membership plans – what this means for you

MSE_Chris_O

Savings app Chip has simplified its membership plan structure, reducing it from three plans to two, and has also added its autosaving feature to its free 'Chip' plan. These changes – which came into effect on 14 January – apply to both new and existing customers.

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Savings app Chip shakes up its membership plans – what this means for you

tonyellis56

Has anyone used Chip? I am thinking of opening an account and wonder if anyone has had good or bad feedback on it?

HHarry

I used it for a bit to take advantage of one of their offers.

It was all fine but, being a dinosaur, I didn’t like it being solely app based.  Also you didn’t get a regular sort code & account number, so I worried about finding my money if it got lost.

 I appreciate those are poor reasons for not liking it, but otherwise I had no problems.

n15h

I've been using Chip for years. Never had any issues with it and always found their easy access savings rates to be better than most banks/savings.

The app links to your bank account and every 4-5 days it works out the amount to transfer to the savings, however you can change/cancel the save each time. It has an algorithm that looks at the money/outgoings in the account and then decides how much to transfer. You can also choose a savings level between 1-5, with 5 saving the most from your linked bank account and 1 being the lowest.

Where I've needed access to the money, you make the withdrawal in the app and it transfers to the linked bank account on the same day. If you need help, you can raise a query through the app and the Chip team provides a respond usually in a day.

As you can guess, all interactions are managed through the App, which I find is easy to use. You can see how much is saved, and the daily interest you are earning, and any withdrawals.

Thanks to Chip, I've saved over £10K in past 3 years without really needing to do anything and having easy access to withdraw money when I need, so overall, I've found it helpful to save.

Worth noting that their savings accounts have FSCS protection up to £85K.

Daliah

tonyellis56 said:

Has anyone used Chip? I am thinking of opening an account and wonder if anyone has had good or bad feedback on it?

I have recently opened a Chip account but only because there was a £20 referral offer (which is expiring at midnight tonight). As of now, I haven't seen anything that would tempt me to use Chip in the longer term, but this might change if they come up with better interest rates and offers. Signing up was simple and the app is easy to use.

StockportSaveree

tonyellis56 said:

Has anyone used Chip? I am thinking of opening an account and wonder if anyone has had good or bad feedback on it?

I had a pretty bad experience with them, I was with Chip for 8 months.  Joined them on a £25 freebie.  Their customer service chat isn't a chat service but a 24-hour turnaround work-queue system and there is no other way of talking to them.  Final straw was when they had an investment round on Crowdcube, pumped up loads of interest, then after getting the money they terminated their 1.25% account rate and forced everyone onto the 0.7% rate, and they only changed their fee structure because everyone complained.
I left them in December, and was just looking to go back to them this month but just seen that their best rate is 0.61% and no longer 0.7%.  This doesn't even make it onto the top savings accounts list on MSE or SavingsChampion, so will give it a miss again.
Something to be aware of is the limitation of their open banking "auto-saving" feature.  If you are looking for this feature, Chip can only connect to ONE bank account to analyse what you can save which doesn't help much. 
Other apps that do this (like Plum for example) can connect to many bank accounts (that support Open Banking), and to your credit cards, to analyse your spending patterns to determine what you can save. 
Most people who use Chip switch this off as the suggested amount is not meaningful as not many people these days only use one bank account.

HardCoreProgrammer2

I just logged into the Chip app again and the rate is still 0.7% not 0.61%.
That said, interest rates are starting to go up and they are already being matched by Cynergy, with Atom Bank not far behind at 0.65%. If they do not increase their rates, then they will soon be overtaken by other providers and there would be no benefit in keeping this account anymore.

StockportSaveree

HardCoreProgrammer2 said:

I just logged into the Chip app again and the rate is still 0.7% not 0.61%.
That said, interest rates are starting to go up and they are already being matched by Cynergy, with Atom Bank not far behind at 0.65%. If they do not increase their rates, then they will soon be overtaken by other providers and there would be no benefit in keeping this account anymore.

Oh, current customers must still be set at 0.7% then.  When I look at the website and scroll down, it shows 0.61% on the Allica account now

StockportSaveree

HardCoreProgrammer2 said:

I just logged into the Chip app again and the rate is still 0.7% not 0.61%.
That said, interest rates are starting to go up and they are already being matched by Cynergy, with Atom Bank not far behind at 0.65%. If they do not increase their rates, then they will soon be overtaken by other providers and there would be no benefit in keeping this account anymore.

Got an answer from Chip customer services today.  Looks like they won't be gaining new customers for a while if they are only offering 0.61%, the partner bank Allica is primarily a SME bank that makes money by lending (irony is that it's Chip's customer's deposits that they are using, so to limit their liquidity exposure Allica don't want any more deposit customers, hence lowering their rates for new customers).  I suspect Chip knew that this would happen and was probably a consequence of the negotiation to raise the savings limit to £85k from previous £30k, otherwise Chip customers would have left.  But it's hardly a good move for the recent Crowdcube "investors" who were promised that Chip numbers would grow.  Hope they aren't a one-trick pony with Allica bank and have other banks willing to work with them.

"Hi thank you for getting in touch.

We understand that missing out on the previous rate is disappointing. We were informed by our partner bank that we could no longer offer this rate to new savers. Unfortunately, anyone who hadn’t made a deposit with no funds in the Allica Easy Access account would now be subject to the new rate as of 25 January 2022

The 0.61% AER (variable) rate for Allica Bank easy-access rate for new customers is still very strong in the market, the cut is more a reflection that Allica have raised the money they want in deposits and are pulling back to focus on lending.

The fact is that rates are set to improve across the market (subject to what the Bank of England does), and we’re confident that there’s going to be more amazing rates on the table for Chip savers. We’re in continuous negotiations with banks and will fight to bring you the best easy-access rates we can.

We apologise for any inconvenience cause"

HardCoreProgrammer2

I just logged into the account today, and the amount has gone up to 0.9%. Not sure when this changed.
Anyway, if there are instant access accounts paying >1%, so perhaps this account is now surplus to requirements.