Neobank for families now warns parents when their kids are in a car crash

A challenger bank for families is branching out beyond banking.

Greenlight Financial Technology in Atlanta, which offers a banking app for children and teenagers with parental oversight, announced a new subscription tier on Wednesday called Greenlight Infinity. For an extra $10 a month subscribers get a suite of safety features, including location sharing, emergency alerts and crash detection, as well as a 5% yield on savings, compared with 1% or 2% on other tiers.

This is the first product for Greenlight that extends its services beyond money-related matters for Generation Z. 

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"Learning how to manage money is a big part of growing up, but we also heard from parents that the physical safety of their children was a top concern," Chris Halaschek, chief product officer at Greenlight, said by email. "With Greenlight Infinity, our aim is to bring parents everything they need to teach their kids about money and also keep their kids safe and connected as they grow into adulthood."

For the safety capabilities, Greenlight built the back-end technology and front-end user experience, and partnered with third-party safety services it declined to name to enable SOS alerts and crash detection with automatic 911 dispatch. For SOS alerts, any user can send an instant alert to emergency contacts, 911 or both with one tap. The "Send SOS alert" button is located on the app dashboard under tiles showing account balances and chores due. For the crash detection, the third-party service uses mobile device sensors to identify collisions based on the level of motion and impact. If a crash is detected, an alert will ask the user if they have been in an accident. If they fail to respond by hitting the "I'm ok" button, the service will automatically notify their emergency contacts and prompt a 911 dispatch.

Another feature, location sharing, will let both parents and their children see each other's locations.

Finally, the savings account will earn a 5% yield on up to $5,000 per family for Infinity members.

Greenlight Infinity, which includes the new alerts, costs $14.98 per month. Greenlight Core, for $4.99 a month, provides basic banking services and a debit card. Greenlight Max encompasses investing, priority customer support, identity theft and purchase protection, and more for $9.98 a month. Banking services are provided by the $640.9 million-asset Community Federal Savings Bank in Woodhaven, New York. Greenlight has more than 5 million parents and kids as customers.