• Now Finvest wants to do the same for U.S. Treasury bonds, giving investors easy access to trading markets.
  • Finvest’s trading rules may become simpler and more convenient, which is good news for the market.
  • Finvest may be important because there is a lot of interest in investing in U.S. Treasury bonds, especially in some Latin countries.

A big new project is coming out

If you use an app like Robinhood, you should have easy access to the stock trading market, which makes investing in stocks much easier. Now Finvest wants to do the same for U.S. Treasury bonds.

Shivam Bharuka, co-founder and CEO of Get Moving, started working at Finvest in 2023. With interest rates so high, Baruka wanted to take advantage of the environment – however, banks were only giving very little money, he told TechCrunch.

“Because interest rates are high, you can basically make free money out of idle cash through U.S. Treasury bills.” But it is not easy to buy Treasury bills today.”

Shivam Bharuka, co-founder and CEO of Get Moving

“You can buy bonds through Treasury Direct, a government website, which was the experience in the 1990s, or use a traditional broker like Fidelity or Charles Schwab. These experiences are often opaque and come with clunky user experiences. Most modern fintech applications also don’t allow you to invest in potential fixed-income assets.”

“However, it is not easy to buy Treasury bonds today. Baruka was part of Y Combinator’s winter 2023 startup team, though, initially working with a firm focused on logistics in India. He eventually changed his position when he noticed the pain points associated with buying Treasury bills.

Develop new products and simplify investment procedures

He and his team are developing Finvest to make buying, managing and selling U.S. Treasury securities seamless.
Here’s how it works: After downloading the iOS or Android app, users create an account, add a bank account, and start making deposits. Typically creating a brokerage account requires a one-day verification process. However, Finvest allows deposits to be paid so that once the account is approved, transactions begin. Finvest charges a flat monthly management fee of 0.03% and a monthly management fee based on the average daily market value of your Treasury assets. Although there are certain expenses, time is money in the investment market.

Baruka isn’t the only one looking to streamline the process. Zamp Finance, backed by Sequoia, provides a money management platform with better access to U.S. Treasury bills. Finvest also offers a high-yielding cash management account that yields 4.4%, higher than most savings accounts.The company is still in its infancy, however, and Baruka has not disclosed how many customers have downloaded the app, but he said about $1 million has been deposited since it launched in December.It also received $2.7 million from an investor group, The investment group includes Bayhouse Capital, Unpopular Ventures, Y Combinator, Olive Tree Capital, Pioneer Fund, Fractal Ventures, and a group of angel investors, Among them is Oliver Jung, a former Airbnb executive.
Baruka plans to use the funding to expand Get Moving’s engineering team and eventually add other asset classes to the Finvest app, such as corporate and municipal bonds.
“We also plan to launch this product internationally,” he said.”We’ve been exploring this Angle because there are a lot of people interested in investing in US Treasuryespecially in Latin countries like Argentina or Brazil because their economies are not that strong. They want to invest in a more robust economic, but there is no direct way.”