Is my money safe with Plum app? 🔐

When you deposit money with Plum, it will typically be stored in either your Plum Account (your Primary Pocket), saved in an Interest Pocket, or invested in one of the funds we offer 📊

Your money is always safe with Plum, but the ways we ensure this will differ according to the area of the product in which it is placed.

We can’t advise you where the best place is for your money, but what follows is an outline of the various ways that it’s protected with us 👇

Plum Account (excluding Interest Pockets)

Your Primary Pocket is where your money is first set aside with Plum. If you’re a Plum Pro subscriber you can create and customise more Pockets too, but this section only relates to those standard ‘Instant Access’ Pocket types, as opposed to Pockets which pay interest (covered later).

Whichever tier of Plum you use, we ensure that from the moment money enters your account, safeguards are in place to keep it safe for you 🤝

Plum uses an Electronic Money Provider, PayrNet (a subsidiary of Railsbank), to set up and administer an E-Wallet for you (this contains any money stored in non interest bearing pockets).

PayrNet maintain a specific UK bank account for all Plum customers with Barclays. This is protected by the E-Money Safeguarding Rules.

As our trusted provider, they will also have information about your Plum Wallet on their database and know how much money is in there at all times 🤓

If either Plum or our E-Money Provider were to go out of business, you can make a claim to get your money back with priority over any potential creditors.

At Plum, we pick our providers very carefully. We will only work with reputable companies with a proven track record and a healthy financial position.

We know just how important your money is, so we do everything in our power to make sure that whatever happens, it will always get back to you.

Investments

When you make an investment through Plum, you’re using your money to buy part of a fund through our Investment Provider 🌱

A fund is basically a big pot of money that is controlled by professional investment managers. They decide which individual businesses should be in the fund, to try and grow the pot whilst also meeting any other objectives, such as a focus on a particular sector or geographic region 🌍  

The key thing is that whilst the value of your investment will naturally fluctuate according to market forces, we protect your share of the fund. This means that if anything happens to us or our investment provider, you will still be able to get your investment back or sell it according to its value.

With investments, and unlike the money in your Plum Account (which is ultimately money in a bank), your share of the fund is safeguarded by a regulated custodian, whose job it is to keep your shares safe 👮

Just like your Plum Account though, should anything happen to Plum or our provider, your share will be passed back to you, and can’t be touched by anyone that we or the provider may owe money to.

What happens if the custodian fails, you ask? 🤔 In this case you could benefit from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (“FSCS”).  

The FSCS is a government backed scheme that seeks to protect your money if an investment firm collapses, up to the value of £85,000. The FSCS offers different levels of protection (and not all may apply to you), but you can find more info about your rights and protections on their website.

Your capital is at risk when you choose to invest, because the value of these funds can go down as well as up. However, you can be assured that we keep your share of the overall pot safe at all times!

Interest Pockets

If you would like to earn a return on your money, but without the risks of investing, you will soon be able to create a Pocket that yields interest 📈

Money saved with Plum in these Interest Pockets is held on Trust with a UK Bank. A Trust is a legal mechanism which means we can look after your money, but legally it never stops belonging to you.

Because Plum handles many customer’s money, it means we can harness administrative efficiencies and potentially negotiate a better interest rate than the one that you may be offered by your own bank on the high street 🏦

If anything were to happen to Plum then the bank can return your money to you directly. And should something happen to the bank itself, then (because you are still the legal owner of the money) you could benefit from the FSCS and claim up to £85,000 of your money back from the bank, if the scheme applies to you. Again, for more details on that, visit the FSCS website.

What happens if Plum goes bust?

Aside from the mess caused by a bust Plum (sorry, we couldn’t resist!)... this would never compromise the safety of your money 🤝

This bit's really important, so we'll reiterate that if something happens to one of our providers, banks, or Plum (don’t worry though, we’re not going anywhere!) you can still get your money back safely:

Plum Account: Your money is stored as E-Money with Barclays Bank, and you can you can make a claim to get your money back with priority over any potential creditors.

Investments: Your money buys a share of a fund, which is safeguarded by a regulated custodian whose job it is to keep your shares safe. If the custodian fails, you could benefit from the FSCS, up to the value of £85,000*.

Interest Pockets: Your money is held on Trust with a UK Bank, who can return it to you directly. If something were to happen to the bank itself, you could benefit from the FSCS for up to £85,000*.

*The FSCS offers different levels of protection and not all may apply to you.

What technology does Plum use to keep my money safe?

We’re unashamedly a technology-first company, and that means we incorporate advanced security as standard.

We never store (or have access to) your bank login details and get read-only access to user transaction data, so in the unlikely event of a breach no money can be transferred out of bank accounts.

We use symmetric cryptography (AES) to store any sensitive data, state-of-the-art password algorithms and 256-bit TLS encryption to communicate between the browser and our servers.

We are also a registered data controller and always act in compliance with the Data Protection Act.

What can I do to make sure I use Plum safely?

As with any app that handles sensitive info, we’d recommend you connect to secure Wifi, turn off Bluetooth when not using it on your phone, and ensure nobody is looking over your shoulder 🙈

We recently added a ‘Privacy Mode’ setting to specifically help with that! Once enabled, it allows you to hide sensitive account balances from your app home screen. You can read more about this in our earlier blog post.

You can learn more about Plum by checking out our website.

For all the latest Plum news and discussion, head to our Plummunity Forum, or follow us on Instagram and Twitter.