Aspiration

Aspiration offers banking services via a web portal and mobile app. The company offers checking accounts free of charge, and also offers a premium package dubbed as ‘Aspiration Plus’, priced at USD 7.99 per month. Under its basic package, the company provides a checking account and debit card. The company mainly follows and promotes environmentally friendly principles and claims that its deposits won’t fund fossil fuel exploration or production. The company also offers 3-5% cashback on Conscience Coalition purchases, a personal impact score that provides insights on how a customer’s spending habits affect climate change, and options to plant a tree with every round-up of spending. Additional features offered under the premium package include higher cashback portions on Conscience Coalition purchases (10%), Annual Percentage Yield (APY) on savings of up to 1%, and a planet protection feature that collects data on carbon output of all gas purchases and automatically purchases offsets to help counter climate impact.

In addition to checking facilities, the company also provides savings options in the form of investments, which includes investments in the company’s ‘Redwood Fund’ and ‘Redwood IRA’; an investment fund and retirement account which solely invests in companies that are based on sustainable and ethical principles - both requiring a minimum deposit of USD 10 each.

In March 2021, the company ventured into the credit segment, by announcing the launch of ‘Aspiration Zero’; a credit card that provides cash-back rewards for users who work towards achieving carbon neutral status, claiming to be the first of its kind. Under the scheme, the company claims that it will plant a tree every time a purchase is made, and provide cash-back rewards of up to 1% on all purchases if customers attain carbon zero status.

Key customers and partnerships

As of May 2020, the company had around 1.5 million customers and the company claims that its customers had collectively planted around 5 million trees by using its services by March 2021. The company also has stated a goal of planting 100 million trees in a decade. In March 2023, the number of customers reached over 5 million.

Funding and financials

In May 2020, the company raised USD 135 million in Series C funding, led by Alpha Edison. The company intended to use the funding to further expand its product offerings. In August 2021, the company announced plans to go public via a merger with InterPrivate III Financial Partners Inc.; a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). The transaction was expected to value the company at USD 2.3 billion and generate cash proceeds of over USD 400 million. The merger was expected to be completed in Q1 2022; however, in August 2023, InterPrivate III Financial Partners terminated the merger agreement.

In December 2021, Aspiration secured USD 315 million of incremental equity funding from Oaktree Capital Management and investment affiliates of Steve Ballmer (former CEO, Microsoft). The company planned to funnel the fresh capital into growth initiatives.