London, 7th November 2024
MyPocketSkill has secured funding from The Centre for Financial Capability to help children and young people learn about money via an innovative “Near-to-Peer” tutoring programme. This forward-thinking approach will pair primary school students (aged 5 - 11) with older students who will teach them basic financial concepts in a fun and engaging way to ensure that more children in the UK benefit from financial education.
Zara Ransley, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of MyPocketSkill said: “With evidence showing that positive money habits are formed around the age of 7, our innovative ‘Near-to-Peer’ Tutoring Programme aims to boost the financial literacy of school children across the UK. Primary aged children will easily relate to older students who will be able to deliver engaging financial education content in a variety of creative ways such as gamification and storytelling. We envisage working with other partners to scale up this initiative and create a sustainable, replicable model that can make a lasting impact on financial education in the UK.”
Press Release available here.
London, 15th August 2024
MyPocketSkill has been selected as a Finalist in Challenge LDN's No Wrong Door Open Innovation Challenge delivered in partnership with the Greater London Authority, Allia Impact and The Resolution Foundation. This award, presented by Howard Dawber (Deputy Mayor for London for Business and Growth) at an event at City Hall, London is really important to us as it recognises our mission to help address skills and employment gaps for young people.
Matthew Harker, Co-CEO and Co-Founder, said "We are thrilled that our company has once again been recognised as a platform that can have a positive impact on financial capability, skills and employability among GenZ and are enthused by the opportunity with Challenge LDN to get more young Londoners into good work.”
Learn more here.
London, 12th June 2024
MyPocketSkill has been announced as one of the scale-up winners of the Santander X Global Challenge: Education, Employability and Entrepreneurship at an awards ceremony in Malaga last night.
Matthew Harker, Co-CEO and Co-Founder, said “This award from Santander X will amplify our growth ambitions as we gear-up to work with over 1m young people in the next 3 years. We know that the levels of financial literacy worldwide are catastrophically low but to have been recognised by a leading global financial institution who shares our mission is really exciting.”
Learn more here.
London, 4th June 2024
MyPocketSkill has been chosen to receive grant funding to develop new ideas for how technology can help address real-world barriers to participation in learning. In partnership with UFI VocTech Trust, we will develop an AI Learning Support Assistant (AILSA) – a copilot to help young people on MyPocketSkill acquire and use in-demand AI skills.
Matthew Harker, Co-CEO and Co-Founder said “Artificial intelligence skills shortages are a serious problem in the UK. Just imagine how valuable it is going to be for students and young people on our site to learn about AI skills in an engaging, interactive and personalised way….consolidated by exposure to real-world AI applications and challenges. We are really excited to be working with the team at Ufi Voc Tech to address real-world barriers to participation in learning alongside our broader strategy to embed AI into the MyPocketSkill platform.“
Learn more here.
London, 22nd April 2024
MyPocketSkill has secured new funding from Innovate UK, the UK’s Innovation Agency, to support the development and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) solutions in the UK government’s priority sectors including the creative industries. The project will enable the digital platform to upskill thousands of young people and help them deliver creative and digital projects more productively for small businesses across the UK.
Matthew Harker, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of MyPocketSkill said “This award from Innovate UK will enable us to forge more efficient and productive working relationships between our young digital creatives and the small businesses they work with. Upskilling young people, through access to AI tools, is a great way to deliver great results for the businesses that hire young people through our platform for creative and digital projects. Furthermore, it boosts our growth ambitions as we gear-up to work with over a million young people in the next three years. These AI tools will also provide a step change in boosting productivity and economic growth across the UK.”
Learn more here.
London, 10th April 2024
MyPocketSkill has been selected as a BBC framework provider to recruit participants for BBC user research. This includes recruitment for qualitative and quantitative research, user testing and insights.
Matthew Harker, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of MyPocketSkill , said “Today’s announcement demonstrates that MyPocketSkill is the go-to-platform for market insights, particularly with our focus on the influential Gen Z market."
Learn more here
London, 20th March 2024
MyPocketSkill has been named ‘Digital Champion of Europe’ by the esteemed European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). The EIT Digital award recognises MyPocketSkill as one of Europe’s most promising tech scale-ups and will provide the GenZ financial education platform with opportunities to scale up with international networking support and funding.
Learn more here
London, 13th March 2024
We are pleased to announce that MyPocketSkill, a GenZ platform for financial education, is sponsoring the Old Grammarians Under 13’s Rugby Team, based in North London. The sponsorship will provide funding for essential equipment and travel for the team enabling more young people to benefit from everything that team sport has to offer. As well as new branded kit for the team, the sponsorship will contribute towards the end of season tour to Italy in April 2024. Our sponsorship of Old Grammarians also aims to harness the power of sport as a way of engaging young people in meaningful financial education.
Learn more here
London, 10th November 2023
Having completed a funding round earlier on in the year, MyPocketSkill now welcomes additional investment from a number of sources, including The Lightbulb Trust - a social impact investor who invests in game-changing organisations that support improvements in education, mental health & wellbeing, and employment. These investments bring our aggregate investment to over £1.25m (including dilutive and non-dilutive funding) and will be used to continue the growth of our Earn.Save.Learn platform, which recently celebrated its 100,000th user. In particular we are enhancing our user experience with automation and analytics to help our users make the best connections with our young community.
Learn more here
London, 12th October 2023
Last month we hit a major milestone - 100,000 platform users on the platform. We could list out a load of data to show how far we’ve come (did we mention 15% MoM growth or the fact that the top teens earn more than £2000 with us?) but the real story is of young people like Muskan, Gwil and Alice whose skills and money confidence have skyrocketed since joining MyPocketSkill.
London, 26th September 2023
MyPocketSkill has been selected as a high-growth business to take part in the Grow London Global programme.
London, 18th April 2023
Ufi Ventures, the UK EdTech investor in skills development, joins MyPocketSkill funding round to scale its Earn.Save.Learn approach.
London, 29th March 2023
Gen Z Fintech MyPocketSkill secures equity funding to scale its Earn.Save.Learn approach and address financial skills gaps.
London, 23rd January 2023
MyPocketSkill has been selected to take part in the EY FinTech Growth Programme. The six week programme is aimed at early stage and growing FinTech businesses, helping to equip them with the right resources, tools and networks to be successful.
London, 22nd November 2022
Silicon Valley Comes to the UK (SVC2UK) has named MyPocketSkill in the UK's top fifty fastest growing tech firms.
MyPocketSkill has also been invited to take part in the SVC2UK 2022 Summit, as a member of the Scale Up Club.
Friday 11th March, 2022
Evaluation from a government-backed organisation has concluded that MyPocketSkill’s Earning is Learning pilot helps to address financial skills gaps
Use of MyPocketSkill led to greater understanding, confidence and motivation to save money.
Brighton, 25 October 2021
Zara Ransley, co-founder of MyPocketSkill, a Gen Z digital platform, which enables teens to Earn, Save and Learn about money, has won the 2021 Female FinTech Competition hosted by Atos, Deutsche Bank, Google Cloud and TechQuartier. The prestigious competition was open to worldwide FinTech companies led by female founders.
London, 5th October 2021
MyPocketSkill, a Gen Z digital platform, which enables teens to Earn, Save and Learn about money, has been selected to join Tech Nation’s Fintech Programme an exclusive network of high-growth UK fintech companies. The programme is funded by the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sports and aimed at accelerating the growth of successful UK scaleups through insight sessions and networking events with key stakeholders and established fintech entrepreneurs.
London, June 16th 2021
MyPocketSkill Co-Founder, Zara Ransley, has been selected for Beyond HERizons, a 12-month scaling programme for high-growth companies, launched by Silicon Valley Comes to the UK.
London, May 27th 2021
MyPocketSkill, a teen earning & saving platform, is to team up with UNIPaaS, a provider of end-to-end payment solutions, to enable UK 13-22 years old to connect with money-earning tasks and to save towards their goals with the help of digital e-wallets.
London, March 8th 2021
Zara Ransley, MyPocketSkill co-founder, has been recognised as one of the UK's top female entrepreneurs. Zara is a winner of Innovate UK's Women in Innovation Awards 2020/21, one of 40 female entrepreneurs making the world of 2021 a better place.
London, 13th January 2021
MyPocketSkill, a provider of digital services in the field of youth finance and employability has been selected by the Money & Pensions Service, a UK government funded organisation focused on financial wellness strategy, to run a UK-wide innovation pilot.
September 16, 2020
MyPocketSkill, a provider of digital services in the field of youth finance and employability, is happy to announce their new partnership with Smart Pension, to promote money-earning and capabilities-building opportunities for teens.
May 20, 2020
MyPocketSkill, a provider of digital services in the field of youth finance and employability, has been awarded funding by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, to provide online services to parents who are struggling to work-from-home and skills-building experience to young people whose lives have been disrupted by COVID-19.
May 12, 2020
This week, our Youth Policy Analyst Ciara attended the Resolution Foundation’s “Corona Class of 2020” webinar. Here Kathleen Henehan discussed the results of her latest research on the impact of COVID-19 on young people. This report is truly striking and made us stop in our tracks here at MyPocketSkill.
March 10, 2020
MyPocketSkill, a provider of strategy and digital services in the field of youth finance and employability, has been appointed as a supplier to the BBC to provide design Research Participant Recruitment framework services.
February 04, 2020
MyPocketSkill is delighted to announce that we have been awarded project funding in a form of a partially funded grant by the Coast to Capital LEP Area Growth Grant Programme, through the Local Growth Fund initiative.
London, May 27th 2021
MyPocketSkill, a teen earning & saving platform, is to team up with UNIPaaS, a provider of end-to-end payment solutions, to enable UK 13-22 years old to connect with money-earning tasks and to save towards their goals with the help of digital e-wallets.
MyPocketSkill, which launched a UK-wide innovation pilot with the Money & Pension Service, is on a quest to create financially empowered GenZs. The pilot is part of a UK government funded programme to help 2 million more children and young people receive a meaningful financial education by 2030. Since then MyPocketSkill has almost doubled its user base to c. 5000 users with over 3000 transactions and engaging with almost 1000 teens via the platform.
Given the success of the platform, Zara Ransley, a Co-founder & Co-CEO of MyPocketSkill, was selected as a winner of Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation Award 2021.
“We are really excited about partnering with UNIPaaS and its experienced payments solutions team. Connecting young people with earning and savings opportunities is a powerful concept, nudging them to develop positive financial behaviour through a ‘learning-by-doing approach. The addition of e-wallets takes us closer to enabling teens to manage their money and save towards their goals, building an eco-system that can potentially include other financial service providers to support them. “
"Since the first time we engaged with MyPocketSkill and learned about the company's vision, UNIPaaS wanted to be part of designing the right solution. UNIPaaS is built for marketplaces and supports embedded onboarding, eWallet management, payment process automation and faster payouts. I'm delighted to see how quickly and smoothly the talented team at MyPocketSkill has adopted and embedded our solution, and I'm looking forward to the new features rollout."
The MyPocketSkill platform has already helped thousands of teenagers to “Earn, Save and Learn” about money and develop a wide range of skills with the help of the TeenTutors and Digital Teens programmes.
The company was set up in 2017, by two parents, with backgrounds in finance, technology and youth policy, Matthew and Zara, to address the gap between teenagers wanting to earn pocket-money and have some financial independence and opportunities to do so.
MyPocketSkill has achieved notable success, including funding awards from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, reaching the finals of the 2020 Great British Entrepreneur Awards, the Global EdTech Start Up Awards and the TechCrunch Europas Awards, 2019.
UNIPaaS is a global company with offices in London. Led by an experienced team of payment experts, the company has developed an embedded finance solution designed from the ground up to support B2B digital platforms, marketplaces, and ISVs.
The solution enables platforms to own their payment experience, control funds and earn revenues from financial services. UNIPaaS has acquired PCI DSS Level 1 certification and is regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as an Authorised Payment Institution.
Contact:
● Zara Ransley – Co-CEO, MyPocketSkill [email protected]
● Ciara Cremin – Youth Policy Lead MyPocketSkill [email protected]
● Yoav Chernitz – Chief Marketing Office, UNIPaaS [email protected]
London, March 8th 2021
Zara Ransley, MyPocketSkill co-founder, has been recognised as one of the UK's top female entrepreneurs. Zara is a winner of Innovate UK's Women in Innovation Awards 2020/21, one of 40 female entrepreneurs making the world of 2021 a better place. Announced today by Science Minister Amanda Solloway to mark International Women’s Day, this award is designed to scale up disruptive business ideas - with special recognition to those that have helped society during COVID-19.
As we build back better from Covid, it is a priority of mine to continue equipping our brightest female innovators with the tools they need to succeed, while encouraging a new generation of women to come forward and pursue their ambitions.
Today we are supporting 40 of our most trailblazing female entrepreneurs, helping them to turn their innovative ideas and aspirations into a reality, creating the products and services that will help improve our lives and boost our economy.
Women have a power to create game-changing innovations and the more women step up to act upon their ideas, the more role models we create.
It is a really powerful concept to connect young people with earning and savings opportunities, nudging them to develop positive financial behaviour through a learning-by-doing approach. The Women in Innovation Award enabled us to bring it to life.
Watch the Women in Innovation Awards 2020/21 here.
London, 13th January 2021
MyPocketSkill, a provider of digital services in the field of youth finance and employability has been selected by the Money & Pensions Service, a UK government funded organisation focused on financial wellness strategy, to run a UK-wide innovation pilot.
This landmark initiative, to understand what works in financial education, will test new and innovative solutions to address gaps in financial education provision at a time when COVID-19 has had a major impact on young people’s prospects.
MyPocketSkill will expand its “Earning is Learning” programme to hundreds of young people across the UK aged 14-18. This learning-by-doing approach will demonstrate how a scalable digital platform helps young people to connect with opportunities to earn money, acquire skills and set savings goals.
“At MyPocketSkill we believe that the best way of learning about money is through the real-world experience of earning and saving. That’s why our Earning is Learning programme supports young people by connecting them with earning opportunities and setting savings goals. We are delighted to be working with the Money & Pension Service in rolling-out and scaling-up this initiative”.
“MaPS’ Financial Education Innovation and Evaluation Programme is all about plugging gaps in evidence and knowledge around what works in financial education to support children and young people throughout childhood, adolescence, and in adulthood. We know that one of the most significant areas of need, with gaps in understanding of what works at the moment, is in understanding what works in digital delivery of financial education. The financial impact of the Coronavirus pandemic means that it’s even more imperative to find out what interventions are impactful in financial education to address some of the long-lasting, adverse effects on the financial wellbeing of today’s children and young people.
We are delighted to be partnering with MyPocketSkill on their exciting pilot as part of our Innovation Programme, and are looking forward to finding out what learnings we can share and build upon to support our national goal of two million more children and young people receiving a meaningful financial education by 2030 as part of the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing”.
In 2017, two parents, with backgrounds in finance, technology and youth policy, Matthew and Zara - set up MyPocketSkill to address the gap between teenagers wanting to earn pocket-money and have some financial independence and opportunities to do so. Fast forward to 2020 and MyPocketSkill’s earning & saving platform has helped thousands of teenagers and households. MyPocketSkill and its founders have already achieved notable success and accolades including funding awards from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, and finalists of the 2020 Great British Entrepreneur Awards.
Contact:
The Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) is here to ensure every person feels more in control of their finances throughout their lives: from pocket money to pensions. When they are, communities are healthier, businesses are more prosperous, the economy benefits and individuals feel better off. MaPS delivers free and impartial money and pensions guidance to the public through the Money Advice Service, The Pensions Advisory Service and Pension Wise.
MaPS is working to make sure the whole of the UK understands that financial, physical and mental health are all deeply connected. MaPS’ role is to connect organisations with the shared purpose of achieving the five goals set out in the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing.
MaPS supports innovation so that everyone can use the most effective methods to help people feel more in control of their money, targeted to those most in need and inclusive of people from all backgrounds. MaPS is an arm’s-length body sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
For further information visit www.maps.org.uk. Members of the public can get free guidance about their money and pensions via:
Award-winning start-up MyPocketSkill partners with Smart Pension to promote matchmaking platform to help to build more financially capable Gen Z
September 16, 2020
MyPocketSkill, a provider of digital services in the field of youth finance and employability, is happy to announce their new partnership with Smart Pension, to promote money-earning and capabilities-building opportunities for teens.
In 2017, two parents - Matthew and Zara - set up MyPocketSkill to address the gap between teenagers wanting to earn and save pocket-money and have some financial independence and opportunities to do so. Fast forward to 2020 and MyPocketSkill’s matchmaking platform has helped over 1,000 teenagers and households.
MyPocketSkill was awarded funding by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, for their response during the pandemic. Their two initiatives, Teen Tutors and Digital Teens, provide affordable and yet high-quality solution to families and businesses. In turn it provides young people, whose lives have been disrupted by COVID-19, with skills-building experience, structure, and opportunity to earn pocket money. MyPocketSkill works closely with young people and pride themselves on being user-led and user-design centric.
We are excited to work with Smart Pension, a company founded by finance and technology professionals, and specifically designed to support UK businesses.
About Smart Pension:
Smart Pension is one of the UK's largest providers of workplace pensions. Co-founded in 2014 by Andrew Evans, Group CEO, and Will Wynne, Group MD, the award-winning master trust has more than £900 million in assets under management and is overseen by independent professional trustees. Smart is backed by Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), J.P. Morgan, Link Group, Natixis Investment Managers and Barclays. In 2020 Smart Pension was named Master Trust Offering of the Year at the Pension Age Awards. Other awards include DC Master Trust of the Year, DC Innovation of the Year and Retirement Innovation of the Year in the 2019 UK Pensions Awards. Smart Pension was also named European Pension Fund of the Year 2019 in the European Pension Awards. We tweet as @SmartPensionUK.
Contact:
Help for work-at-home parents and young people as MyPocketSkill awarded fast-track Innovate UK funding
May 20, 2020
MyPocketSkill, a provider of digital services in the field of youth finance and employability, has been awarded funding by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, to provide online services to parents who are struggling to work-from-home and skills-building experience to young people whose lives have been disrupted by COVID-19.
Innovate UK has earmarked £40 million of government investment to fast-track the development of innovations borne out of the coronavirus crisis while supporting the UK’s next generation of cutting-edge start-ups – helping to build the businesses of tomorrow and propel their future prosperity.
Since lockdown began, MyPocketSkill has been adapting its business model to meet the changing needs of the UK public. This funding will enable MyPocketSkill to do so on a larger scale. MyPocketSkill will be growing its digital platform to connect parents who need help for their children so that they can work at home effectively, with capable young people, who are able to provide all types of support, from music and art lessons, to dance, drama,
homework help and other digital and creative, skills.
Class 2020: Resolution Foundation says Covid19 significantly worsens prospects of school-leavers
May 12, 2020
This week, our Youth Policy Analyst Ciara attended the Resolution Foundation’s “Corona Class of 2020” webinar. Here Kathleen Henehan discussed the results of her latest research on the impact of COVID-19 on young people. This report is truly striking and made us stop in our tracks here at MyPocketSkill.
The report looks at how previous recessions have affected young people, and how the current lockdown and consequent following recession could affect them in the future. The research found that the “Coronavirus effect” to unemployment is expected to reduce a low-skilled education leaver’s chance of being in work by more than a third. Additionally, overall, it is estimated that an additional 640,000 young people in the UK could find themselves unemployed in this year alone.
Overall it is certainly clear that there are major challenges in store for young people over the coming years. Though government policy will dictate the levels of such challenges, we also think it’s important to enhance young people’s work experience through creating a nurturing setting for skill development and promoting financial capability. This is our core ethos at MyPocketSkill. Since lockdown has been implemented, our overall takeaway through our work with young people is one of resilience and resourcefulness. We aim to foster this through our campaigns and support young people in taking small effective steps towards further education and employment.
More here https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/class-of-2020/
MyPocketSkill appointed by the BBC to provide participants for user testing and digital research
March 10, 2020
MyPocketSkill, a provider of strategy and digital services in the field of youth finance and employability, has been appointed as a supplier to the BBC to provide design Research Participant Recruitment framework services. MyPocketSkill will be working with the BBC’s User Experience and Design department to identify, recruit and deliver participants for a range of design & research programmes.
Assignments will could span across a range of digital products, including Children’s, Education, Radio and Music, iPlayer, Interactive TV, News, Sport and Weather.
MyPocketSkill is a digital technology and advisory company founded in 2017. Our vision is to create a financially empowered Gen Z.
Contact:
MyPocketSkill is awarded project funding by Coast to Capital LEP Area Growth Grant Programme
February 04, 2020
MyPocketSkill is delighted to announce that we have been awarded project funding in a form of a partially funded grant by the Coast to Capital LEP Area Growth Grant Programme, through the Local Growth Fund initiative. This grant enables us to develop a new fully featured version of MyPocketSkill product that will enhance user experience by using a leading-edge design thinking and allow us to scale outside of our pilot locations.
MyPocketSkill is a digital platform and youth consultancy group that helps GEN Z to become more financially capable by connecting them with local tasks and encouraging them to save towards their goals.
The Local Growth Fund is government funding awarded to Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) for projects that benefit the local area and economy. As part of this fund the Coast to Capital LEP Area Growth Grant Programme is being delivered under the Business Finance scheme which has a funding pot of £3.5 million for 2019-21. For more information please go to: http://www.coast2capital.org.uk/growth-grant
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MyPocketSkill - We're Recruiting Teen Ambassadors!
April 12, 2019
We are currently recruiting Teen Ambassadors - so if you want to make a mark at your school or college and earn money by promoting MyPocketSkill to your friends and families, then please see here.