Clever tech to help you save money during Covid-19

From smart car insurance to virtual credit cards, these little tech tricks add up over time 
Chip
Amelia Heathman17 April 2020

One of the worst impacts of the coronavirus pandemic is certainly going to be on the economy and people’s savings accounts.

Businesses across the UK have been forced to furlough staff, and people are worried about how they’re going to pay rent and bills if they are unable to work.

As the saying goes, every penny helps and there are small ways you can claim back the pounds with a little bit of tech help over the next few weeks.

By Miles: switch up your car insurance

Hardly driving because of the lockdown? Then it must be frustrating to be paying expensive car insurance for a vehicle that’s parked on your drive.

By Miles’ car insurance proposition is simple: you pay a flat annual fee to insure your car when it’s parked and then each month you pay another fee for how many miles you’ve driven, thanks to a tiny telematics box fitted in your car. The idea is to reward the UK’s low mileage motorists, who drive 7,500 miles or less.

Since the lockdown, ByMiles customers are driving 75 per cent less on average, which is helping them to save money. “For our customers when they are experiencing or potentially experiencing financial stress, they won’t need to worry about their car insurance because a lot of them will have their costs go down,” CEO James Blackham tells the Standard.

Information about miles travelled are all stored in the By Miles app
By Miles

The insurtech start-up is encouraging drivers to get a refund from their existing insurance and switch over to By Miles during the lockdown to save money. Once the lockdown ends and they go back to driving 7,500+ miles a year on average, the company is waiving cancellation fees.

“Honestly, it’s not really beneficial for us [to waive fees] but we want to do our bit for customers during the crisis and this is what our product is set up to do, so you pay a fair price for your car insurance,” says Blackham. “It’s important for companies to try and do what they can in these weird and unusual circumstances.”

Chip: save streaks for a rainy day

If you don’t already use the AI savings app Chip, now is a great time to start. You link up the app to your bank account and it uses AI to analyse your spending and saves a small amount of money for you every week. It all adds up: the average Chip user saves £73.77 a month, though this has since increased to £83.42 during the pandemic.

Before the lockdown, people were most likely to save for a holiday or Christmas, whereas now people are setting goals to save for a safety net fund.

As a result, the app has recently introduced a new Save Streaks feature to encourage people to stay motivated to save money in these difficult times. You can track the number of consecutive days you’ve saved, and predict how much you will save in 50 days or up to a whole year if you maintain the streak.

Chip's Save Streaks are designed to incentivise people to save
Chip

CEO Simon Rabin says the app is also looking to introduce rewards for those who keep up with autosaves. “Most banks reward you for the amount you save, where we thought it was about time you were rewarded for your consistent effort to save, no matter how high or low the amount,” he tells the Standard.

“People often find it all too easy to skip a save or give up, whereas we believe that putting away £1 instead of £0 is still one step closer to reach your goal.”

DoNotPay: cancel free trials

When you’re spending all this free time at home, you might be tempted to sign up for a free trial for a subscription service, whether it’s Netflix or Spotify. But if you’re concerned about paying for a full subscription afterwards, there’s a handy app that will cancel any subscription trials for you once they end so you don’t lose any cash.

Named DoNotPay, the app has grown in popularity thanks to its robo-lawyer which can fight traffic tickets for you and apply for refunds if you take a plane ride and the wifi doesn’t work.

When it comes to cancelling free trials, the app creates a virtual credit card for you so you can make transactions without revealing your real information. These unique numbers are randomly generated, and once the free trial has expired, it will automatically be cancelled via the app and no charges will be placed on your actual card.

Another handy feature allows you to generate a random email address for the free trial too so it removes all the tracking data companies use to market services to you. A word of advice, however: Ii you try to use a virtual card to pay for an actual transaction, the DoNotPay system will recognise that it is not a free trial and so it won’t work.

Osper: cashback becomes pocket money

Cashback is a great way to save money without even realising you’re doing it and the fintech Osper has teamed up with KidStart to turn it into pocket money.

Osper is a parent-managed prepaid debit card for young people. The Osper app gives parents visibility and control over their child’s spending, such as block spending at age-restricted merchants, whilst it allows the child some degree of financial freedom as they can securely spend their own money both online and in shops.

The partnership with KidStart allows parents to earn back a percentage of their spending when they shop online at retailers such as Tesco, John Lewis, eBay and Argos. This money can be transferred directly to the Osper app and it’s available as pocket money.

“By partnering with Kidstart, we’ve ensured that pocket money now takes care of itself,” says Osper’s Tom Bishop. “Your everyday spending will earn you cash which kids can then spend using their card.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in