At the end of last year, we invited Debut community members in our Green Room Programme to experience Debut in Early Access and provide feedback. At the same time, we’ve been working to fine-tune the app and the overall experience for everyone.
Green Room is our opt-in programme for customers who want to take a more active role in helping to shape Debut.
Firstly, thanks to all of our Green Room members supporting Debut behind the scenes and everyone participating in the Early Access Programme. We’re so grateful to you. Interest from the community has been tremendous. We are still working through the groups, so if you aren’t already on Early Access, just hold tight. We’ll get to you!
A look at Categories in Debut 👀
I’m super excited to share a glimpse of Debut. As always, your feedback is so important to us, so without further ado, here’s a look at some of what you can expect from Debut.
Debut intelligently sorts your expenses by category
Every time you use Debut to pay an online bill, order a bite to eat or buy something at the shops, Debut uses machine learning to automagically identify your purchase and assign it to the correct spending category.
By sorting your spending into categories, like shopping, travel, bills, etc, you can see how much you're spending and what proportion of your spending makes up that category. Seeing your expenses sorted into categories can help to build awareness and mindfulness so you make more informed decisions at the checkout.
What else are we working on?
Together with you our community, we’re building Debut – a new kind of bank here in New Zealand. In the interest of transparency, the team wants to share what we’re working on. If you’re in our Early Access Programme, you might already know about some of this.
Customer Sign-Up in the App
Since Debut is entirely online, customers can sign up for Debut in just a couple of minutes with their NZ Driver's License or Passport. We’re also exploring options to accept different types of ID.
Customers can choose between two shiny card designs. We’ll make some tweaks to make sure this is clear to new customers.
We’re reviewing accessible standards to ensure all New Zealanders can use Debut and look forward to making our draft plan public in the future.
Savings Sheds
In addition to helping Kiwi keep more of their hard-earned cash, we want to build services that help them grow their savings. Growth options for Savings Sheds are on the way, along with the ability to make recurring deposits to Savings Sheds. Early Access members may be happy to hear that we’re working on some tweaks to expense rounding, too.
Payments
Debut members in Early Access will soon be able to send cash to friends and family instantly through the app.
Once again, thanks for all the fantastic feedback. Keep it coming!
Ngā mihi nui
The team here at Debut is actively working on improving the app and overall experience for all customers. Intelligent expense categorisation, an easy sign-up process, and powerful features such as Savings Sheds and instant payments are just the beginning. As always, Debut is a collab with you to build better banking here. We love hearing all of your feedback and look forward to continuing to work together to further improve Debut. Stay tuned for more updates and new features in the near future!