Youth-Focused Finance Platform Step Raises $300M

Step, a financial platform aimed at teens and young adults, has raised $300 million in debt funding, bringing the company’s total raised capital to $500 million.

“With this new round of funding, Step will accelerate investments in product infrastructure and continue to bring ground-breaking financial products to the next generation,” the company said in a news release Tuesday (Oct. 11).

Step raised $100 million in a Series C funding round last year. The Palo Alto, California, company has attracted a number of high-profile investors, including actors Will Smith and Jared Leto and the NBA’s Steph Curry.

Read more: Forward-Thinking Financial Services Target The Next Generation

Apart from the new funding, Step has also begun offering cryptocurrency investing, saying in the release it is now the first platform that lets teens — with parental consent — buy and sell bitcoin. (Stocks and other cryptocurrencies will soon be added to the platform.)

The company has also launched Money 101, a six-lesson financial literacy program to teach students and parents about modern banking that is now being taught in more than 100 high schools around the country, according to the release.

“In less than two years, we’ve been able to help more than 3 million customers establish a strong financial foundation and begin to think about their long-term goals,” said Step Founder and CEO CJ MacDonald in the release. “We’re thrilled to be able to offer teens and young adults the ability to build credit, budget, spend, save, earn and now invest in their financial futures directly within the Step app.”

In April, Step chose embedded crypto infrastructure company Zero Hash to operate its crypto product. Zero Hash will use its digital assets infrastructure to give customers access to a library with more than 50 cryptocurrency tokens, as well as with cryptocurrency addresses to deposit and withdraw on-chain.

See more: Zero Hash Tapped for Step’s Teen Crypto Platform

Zero Hash CEO Edward Woodford said in an interview with PYMNTS that the collaboration is interesting because Step’s product is aimed at “financial education.”