Greencoins

Greencoins is an application that stimulates financial health through action, using the practice of sustainable habit to obtain cashback. We help low-skilled workers build your first savings through an intelligent incentive app that uses a bar-code scanner available in the cell phone's camera to digitize plastic packages and send it to recycle. The core idea is to transform each bar-code digitization into cashback, enabling the transferring of the money acquired in the app to a partner brokerage house. The platform uses a scoring system to empower workers through technology - a collaborative network for financial engagement. Our goal is to make financial intelligence more accessible and tangible, using conscious habits as the main incentive, reducing waste, and linking content to action, thus “closing the loop.” 

Only 33% of adults worldwide are financially literate. Low-skilled, informal workers, and immigrants - mainly women - are more likely to suffer from gaps in financial knowledge, jeopardizing their future with unpaid debts due to the huge effect of interest rates and inappropriate use of financial products. 

At the same time, the unconscious consumption of products, especially plastic, is growing worldwide, resulting in 91% of the plastic dumped in the oceans, landfills, and incinerators. This results in two central issues:

1.Marginalized communities face multiple barriers to active financial engagement, they do not have enough savings to cover at least three months of living expenses, which makes it difficult to enter any traditional financial service, due to the need for a minimum amount of money to start it.

2.There are no recycling markets for polyethylene, commonly used for bottles. This is true even for most global value chains that do not present relevant interest in recycle. Also, lack of package traceability information after the Last Mile.

Greencoins platform provides a game user interface that is easy to use and operate. The game offers goals, which cover emergency reserves for long-term investments, achieved according to the financial phase of each user. The code bar reader available on the cellphone´s camera digitize plastics packages and informs the nearest supermarket to return. Machine learning uses a scoring-based system to process financial goals and accumulated points from conscious habits, offering a personalized journey. The app has three main functionalities:

1.Encouraging workers to obtain the cashback through the practice of scanning plastic packaging and enabling the use of this money to achieve financial goals. 

2.Connecting workers to a financial network so that they can build collaborative engagement, stimulated by the accumulation of points with friends and family.

3.Alerting workers with tips on how to save more and provide investment content recommendation.

IoT (Internet of Things) connects information in terms of activity, linked by flows of consumer goods and plastic products. For example, a user buys water in the supermarket and has your market account linked to the Greencoins app, enable us to send a notification informing him to digitize this bottle and earn cashback.

Greencoins offer low-skilled, informal, and immigrant workers the opportunity to have a different relationship with money, allowing people who have never saved the chance to build a financial reserve encouraged by rewards of sustainable habits, engaging education and action. Our mission is to improve financial health for all, providing financial security to prepare them for future economic crises, reducing the impacts of recession and technological changes at work.

No applicable.

Greencoins moves financial literacy from knowledge to action providing a technology-driven solution available to workers - leveraging the Machine Learning and Internet of things technology. The app will be able to reward sustainable habits in cash as the main incentive to build an emergency reserve based on financial goals, in an accessible and scalable way. Besides, will stimulus financial engagement through a collaborative network around the workers.

On the organization's side, we use the Internet of Things to provide greater traceability and valuable database from digitized products to each stakeholder along the entire value chain. This enables a better negotiation with companies, to turn a recycled product into cashback for the user, achieving a transparent and true circularity for all stakeholders.

Our collaborative platform uses the barcode scanner to digitalize packages, encouraging workers to be financially rewarded for their conscious habit and allowing producers to have large-scale data carriers - this use of technology makes us scalable and affordable to reach large numbers of people. We will also develop an algorithm to process consumption, recyclable, and investment flows to build a structured financial content recommendation to connect users in new ways.

Greencoins_demo.

With Greencoins, we're unlocking the incredible potential of workers, women, and families to start a financial independence and improve financial health. Our vision is to expand to serve the millions of workers globally through technology that helps them to act. We will help every worker to create financial intelligence and change the way our of consume.

Currently, Greencoins is only an app prototype. In one year, we will serve at least 0.5 million persons of Brazil population, and in the next five years, we intend to achieve 20% across the globe.

1.Grow:  impact at least 1 million workers in low-skilled, low-income, minority, immigrant in Brazil populations and beyond.

2.Financial Engagement: Greencoins will facilitate 0.5 million have access to financial health by practice.

3.Sustained consumption: Establish transparency partnerships between producers and consumers along the entire value chain/ Extend QR Code and Machine learning to connecting with online payment companies (ifood, paypall, rappi) to identify the habit and propose changes. 

4.Product and technology: Fully build out the current prototype version.

1.Lack of trust in formal financial services and providers/ lack of capital and limited financial capabilities.

2.Cultural and social factors. People meet constraints in accessing and using financial services based on their religion, ethnicity, gender, age, or other socio-demographic factors.

3.There is no policy for collecting back the bottles that large companies distribute in markets.

4.Integration of all processes and high cost for implementing the technology.

1.Make sustainable habits gateway for financial health.

2.Provide, in parallel to the platform, interactive workshops for the understanding of key economic concepts such as compound interest, savings - crucial for good financial decisions.

3.Use the benefits of plastics digitalization as an incentive for companies to have a policy of collecting recyclables.

Not applicable.

Only I.

I have a degree in international relations, and a background in the financial market and technology sector. One of my main skills is to be a problem solver and creator of new ideas.

Not Applicable.

• Customers: we provide an intelligent incentive app that encouraging workers to obtain the cashback through the practice of scanning plastic packaging and enabling the use of this money to achieve financial goals. They will need this to create financial independence and improve financial health, providing financial security to prepare them for future economic crises.
• Organizations: we provide a valuable database from digitized products to all stakeholder along the entire value chain. They will need this to enabling  greater traceability of the products after the Last Mile and, monitor delivery performancee.

Not applicable

I would like Solve help on the integration of all processes,it includes the technology to digitize plastic packaging, the integration of cashback to the app with financial goals until the final recycling of plastic for the company.

• BioCellection - Solver Member.
• MIT faculty

Women are more likely to suffer from gaps in financial knowledge, jeopardizing their future with unpaid debts due to the huge effect of interest rates and inappropriate use of financial products. Greencoins app will be able to reward sustainable habit in cash as the main incentive to build an emergency reserve based on financial goals, in an accessible and scalable way. So we will use the Innovation for Women Prize to unlocking the incredible potential of women and families to start financial independence and improve financial health

We will use the Gulbenkian Award for Adult Literacy to help moves financial literacy from knowledge to action providing a technology-driven solution available to workers. The idea is to serve the millions of workers globally through technology that helps them to act - engaging education and action. Our vision is help every worker to build financial intelligence and stimulus financial engagement through a collaborative network around the workers.

We will use AI for Humanity Prize to accelerate Machine learning technology that uses a scoring-based system on Greencoins app to process financial goals and accumulated points from conscious habits, offering a personalized journey. Also, extend QR Code and Machine learning to connecting with online payment companies (ifood, paypall, rappi) in order to identify the habit and propose changes.

We will use Future Planet Capital Prize to help change the structural cause of two interrelated problems that Greencoins wants to solve. 

1. How low-skilled workers consume. 

2. How low-skilled workers have access to financial education and financial management.

Our goal is to make these people not only consume in an infinite cycle, but also create a financial and sustainable awareness of consumption habits.