Plum is the smart money app that can help across different areas of your personal finances. You can use Plum to set more money aside, budget your spending, save plus engage and manage your investments. Each of these offerings represents different financial products and services, which respectively fall under different regulatory frameworks designed to help if something goes wrong. Let's look at the various ways your money is protected with Plum 🔒
What does protecting your money mean?
We take security seriously. We support face/fingerprint recognition and use 256-bit TLS encryption to keep the Plum app safe.
When we talk about protecting your money, what we mean is, if something happens to one of our providers, partners, or Plum itself (don’t worry though, we’re not going anywhere!) you can still get your money and savings back safely.
There are plenty of traditional banks and money-saving apps out there, and we can’t advise you where the best place is for you to place your money. But, we'll explain how your deposits, savings and investments are protected with Plum.
How money in your Plum Account is protected?
The default area of your Plum account is the Primary Pocket. Any money you deposit from your linked bank account will land here as e-money (electronic money). E-money is stored in a digital wallet, and unlike money saved in a traditional bank account, it can’t be lent from one person to another.
Your Primary Pocket is operated and maintained by our e-money provider, PayrNet, which is obliged to protect your money through the regulatory ”safeguarding rules”. They do this by placing it into a separate, segregated bank account, where it is pooled with money belonging to other Plum and PayrNet customers. Needless to say, your money is at all times prevented from being used for Plum’s own account!
These safeguarding accounts are protected by law, so other creditors of a failed e-money institution (such as PayrNet) can’t make a claim against them. In practice, this means if PayrNet were to fail, it should have enough money in its safeguarding account to pay all customers the money they are owed. They are obliged to do so (and we have staff with the appropriate skills, experience and authority to monitor this)!
Of course, for safeguarding to protect you, the e-money provider must honour their own safeguarding obligations, by ensuring that there is enough money in its safeguarding account to repay all customers.
This is why, here at Plum, we pick our providers very carefully. We are also committed to supporting safeguarding through our policies and procedures!
In the event that anything were to happen to our e-money provider, PayrNet, an independent administrator would be appointed to manage the closure of the business and distribute cash held back to customers. Any money belonging to Plum customers can only be paid out from the pooled, safeguarding account after costs have been settled.
Company stocks
Just like investment funds, the value of your stock investments will naturally fluctuate according to market forces from time to time, but your underlying investments (the company stocks/shares that you own) are protected.
Your stock investments are safeguarded by a US federally mandated, nonprofit organisation, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC).
SIPC ensures that should anything happen to us (Plum) or our investment broker (Alpaca), your investments can be transferred back to you and not be touched by anyone who we or our broker may owe money to.
SIPC protection also extends to non-US citizens, covering accounts up to $500,000 per client, as defined by SIPC rules.
If you'd like to learn more about Plum then you can check out our website.
Do not hesitate to contact our customer support team (via email / in-App support chat) if you have any further questions.