Question 1

My bank offers Carefull for free, how do I sign up?

Accepted Answer

If we partner with your bank to offer free access to you, you can simply follow the partner link from your bank to sign up for a free account. If you do not have a link, you can reach out to your bank or our support team for assistance.

Question 2

Is Carefull secure? Can I trust Carefull with my loved one’s financial information?

Accepted Answer

We understand that being a financial caregiver means maintaining a sacred trust. We believe our duty to you and your family is the same. That’s why we take security seriously and, from our very beginning, have worked to ensure your data is and will always be safe and secure.

Carefull will never have access to any of your loved one’s financial account login or password information. That information is all managed through our partnership with Plaid — a company that enables us to connect to your financial accounts. Plaid is used by most banks and personal finance management applications in the US—including Venmo, Chime and Betterment—to allow you to connect accounts from other financial institutions. You can read more about Plaid here.

Importantly, Carefull maintains read-only access to your data. We use your data to provide insights and analysis only. The access you grant us does not allow money movement in any form.

Additionally, Carefull secures your loved one’s financial data in a variety of ways:

Encryption: Our application uses bank-level 256-bit encryption to store and transmit your data over the internet.
Multi Factor Authentication: We verify your account with a unique code sent only to your mobile device.
Biometrics: You can optionally enable the biometric security on your device so that each session with the Carefull app can be secured with your face or fingerprint.

Last

Question 3

Who is the team behind Carefull?

Accepted Answer

Carefull was founded in 2019 by Max Goldman and Todd Rovak, two veterans of the technology and financial services industries. Max has worked in technology venture capital, managed products at Google and started up three other companies. Directr, his most recent company, was acquired by YouTube. Prior to his role at Carefull, Todd was the CEO of Fahrenheit 212, an innovation consultancy based in New York City that was acquired by Capgemini.

Carefull is based in New York City and has an engineering office in Montreal.

Question 4

What types of “alerts” will I receive from Carefull?

Accepted Answer

Carefull pulls together insights and alerts from all of your loved one’s connected financial accounts and brings the most urgent ones to your attention. You'll receive alerts about financial issues like:

Changes in spending patterns
Unusual transfer types / withdrawals
Unusual transfer payees
Unusual cash usage
Unknown or unusual merchants
Late bills and payments
Large or unusual transactions
Duplicate transactions
Unusual balances or balance patterns
Unusual transaction locations
Recurring charitable donations
Irregular and unexpected fees

Question 5

Can I connect multiple bank accounts?

Accepted Answer

Yes! To connect an additional bank account, go to the Settings page then select Financial Account. From there, click Add Institution on the website or Add Bank on the mobile app. You’ll then have to log-in with the credentials for that bank account.

Question 6

My parents don’t use online banking. How can I help them set up online financial accounts?

Accepted Answer

The approach you use will depend on the level of financial caregiving you are providing. If you are just starting to help your parents and they don’t have online accounts because they are worried about cybersecurity, assure them that online banking is safe. (You could provide them with this FDIC guide to safe banking on the Internet.)

Emphasize that being able to check their accounts online whenever they want rather than waiting to get a statement each month actually is a better way to keep tabs on their accounts. And using the Carefull app will provide an added layer of protection because it will monitor their accounts 24/7 for unusual activity.

If you already have been helping your parents with money matters, you will need to be their power of attorney to legally set up online access to their financial accounts. Go with your parents to their bank to notify the bank of your POA status (bring the POA document so the bank can make a copy) and to set up online banking with a username and password of your choice. Then reach out to their credit card issuers to notify them of your POA status. You’ll need to send a copy of the POA document (most likely a notarized copy) to the credit card companies. Once the companies have you on file as your parents’ POA, you can create online accounts for their cards.

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