Spend more to save more: this is a curious concept that some players are banking on to encourage the French, especially young people, to invest. Thanks to the acquisition last May of the company Salva, which offers prepaid cards, the mutual insurance company Garance plans to launch this summer a cashback scheme to feed a retirement savings plan (PER). “We want to democratize access to savings and this scheme will make it possible to finance additional retirement through consumption savings,” explains Charles Besnard, marketing director at Garance.
In practice, all purchases made via the card from a thousand partner brands will allow you to recover a few percent of the amount spent, returned by the merchant. Thus Fnac rebates 3.5% of purchases made, Decathlon 4%, Carrefour 5%, etc. The equivalent of 1% will be taken to finance the costs of the system. The originality lies in the fact that the card will be backed by a PER, which will be opened as soon as the prize pool has reached the 250 euro level. “The client will then be invited to enter into the process of subscribing to a PER, backed by managed management,” specifies Charles Besnard. The contract is presented as a variation of the PER Garance Vivacité, with reduced payment costs.
A first step, a prelude to other products
The concept has also attracted German broker Trade Republic, which has been offering its European clients a Visa card associated with a “saveback” system since the beginning of the year. “We have adapted the cashback system to our mission, which is to help people invest their savings,” says Vincent Grard, the start-up’s French manager.
Unlike Garance, the prize pool is not made up of payments from partner merchants but by Trade Republic, which finances all expenses made with the card up to 1%. “At the start of each month, we take the amount saved, up to 15 euros per month, and we invest it in an asset that the client has chosen,” says Vincent Grard. This can be a traded index fund, a stock or another medium. The constraint: already be a customer of the platform, that is to say have at least one savings plan, supplemented with a minimum of 50 euros. For these two players, the objective is to enable consumers to get started with savings, and then equip them with other products over time.