Kids’ money app Kit moves into gamified learning to educate children about finance through games
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A popular kids’ money app called Kit has decided to move into gamified learning, seeing great potential in trying to educate future participants of the global financial industry through bite-sized education and experiences.
The app, created by the Commonwealth Bank, seeks to help young people build their financial capability. To this extent, the app is launching Money Quests, a new gamified experience built by the in-house gaming team hired specifically for this task. Kit was initially unveiled in May 2022, and its new entry into the gamified learning sector marks the end of a sixteen-month pilot phase.
What is Money Quest about?
Money Quest will allow its users to create customizable avatars and go on in-app quests designed to teach them about new financial concepts. Along the way, kids will also be eligible to win rewards that will make the experience more interesting and incentivize them to continue their unique form of financial education.
Kit’s Money Quests will contain mini-games and nudges that will also encourage children to complete certain real-world tasks, like setting up a savings goal. It will further introduce them to concepts such as scenario-based learning experiences, including identifying scam text messages and emails.
The number of scams, phishing attacks, and similar issues has been on the rise for years, and for this specific problem, it is largely believed that the lack of education and understanding is to blame. The app hopes that educating children at a young age will make them better prepared to avoid such issues in the future.
Kit’s managing director, Yish Koh, said: “We’re upping the game for how young people in Australia learn about money. While measuring the impact we’ve made over the last sixteen months has proven we’re on the right track, we know gamification can make learning more enjoyable and impactful – and saw real potential to add this feature to Kit.”
What will kids be able to do?
While the new aspect of the app is meant to be educational, it is also supposed to be fun and captivating. This is why the new release will allow users to create customizable avatars to represent themselves in the Kit world. Kids will be able to unlock more than 70 unique assets that will help them build their unique avatars.
They will have access to clothes, facial features, costumes, accessories, as well as assistive devices. In time, additional assets will become available as the company releases new quests for kids to complete and win rewards by doing so.
The app will equip kids with their own Kit account and a prepaid card. With these tools, they will be able to start learning how to manage their earnings, savings, and spending. When it comes to earnings, Kit will allow kids to earn money on “chores PayDay,” while they will also be able to create savings “Stacks,” and finally, access their money via ATMs.
The app also features a Boss Mode, which will allow parents to set up certain parameters, such as a PIN protection, spend limits, and alike. So far, tests with thousands of users have revealed a 3%-14% uplift in children’s financial capability during the first eight months of use.
