Nude

There's no place like your first home

Nude’s mission is to stand up for first time home buyers, by making it super easy for them to save for a home. A recent YouGov survey highlighted the potential anxieties faced by first time buyers, revealing that 46% of young people are uncertain about saving for their future. “The financial system around home buying can be daunting, but it doesn’t need to be,” said Crawford Taylor, CEO and Founder.

That’s why Crawford and his team set up Nude. The app has a truly modern approach to saving, using behavioural science to motivate users to reach their deposit target. “Take running,” Crawford said. “We know more people will hit their goals if they have a clear target to aim for, like signing up for a marathon, or getting friends and family to support them. So we applied the same principles to saving a deposit to buy a house.”

In the app, users can visualise the type of house they want and where they want to live. This is then linked to property prices, showing the contributions they’ll need to make to reach their savings goal and how quickly they can get there.

Instant payments: Get set, grow

Nude users can choose to make regular or one-off payments – which Nude calls contributions – to their savings pot. That means Nude receives money in a variety of ways, from regular monthly payday contributions, to single payments when people can afford them.

Behind the scenes, all Nude’s payments are managed by GoCardless. “GoCardless were early innovators in direct bank payments and we initially spoke to the team about variable recurring payments (VRPs),” Crawford said. “At the time, the industry framework wasn’t mature enough, so we appointed GoCardless for direct bank payments, with the knowledge that the team would help us move to VRPs when the time was right.”

In the meantime, GoCardless has introduced Nude to instant one-off payments, powered by open banking. “Instant Bank Pay has been amazing for us because the payments credit our customers’ accounts more quickly and give them a much clearer understanding of where they stand.” 

It’s a win for all parties, and a major stress reducer for Nude’s customers, like personal trainer (and GoCardless user herself) Frankie Clark: “There’s so much I love about Nude! The app is really easy and simple to use. When my income does fluctuate, I need the ability to be able to change it, because it puts way too much pressure on me. Or if I need to cancel a month, there's no fear that I'm going to be charged or things like that. Having that flexibility is really important, and also having the urgency and importance for it as well. It's a really sweet balance.”

Peace of mind for busy start-ups

GoCardless has been Nude’s payments partner since they launched in 2020. “We did an analysis of the payments market at the time and GoCardless stood out,” Crawford said. “When you’re pulling together the infrastructure to run a company, it’s really important to choose the right partners. GoCardless had a flexible offering. They delivered on time. The platform was easy to use and integrate with, and our developers found the documentation easy to follow. It all worked really well.”

And the Nude team is still sure they made the right choice today. “If GoCardless says they’ll deliver something, they do,” Crawford said. “The platform is very stable, and they're a nice bunch of people to work with, especially our Enhanced Customer Success Manager.”

Game-changing flexibility

Nude aims to create an environment that helps first time buyers make the best decisions with their money, and GoCardless is the natural fit to achieve this.

In addition to regular and one-off payment contributions, GoCardless also powers a number of Nude’s unique features through open banking, such as Gift Time and Ideas.

Gift Time allows users to share their savings goal with friends and family. “Instant Bank Pay instantly moves money from the friend or family member’s bank account into the user’s Nude account, so they see the effect on their savings goal immediately,” Crawford explained.

The Ideas feature relies on GoCardless for open banking access to customers’ bank accounts. Customers can see all their finances from a single location – the Nude app – which helps them make better decisions and achieve their goal more quickly.

Nude expects to work on more opportunities like this in the coming months. “100% of contributions that leave customers’ accounts and come into Nude come through GoCardless,” Crawford said.