TL;DR
- Robinhood is launching a few new financial services, including one arriving this fall called Robinhood Banking.
- Available for Robinhood Gold members, Banking will offer users the ability to request cash delivery.
Apps and the services that power them have made it practically effortless to order nearly anything you can think of. Amazon’s got us covered on retail, Instacart’s happy to head to the grocery store on your behalf, and DoorDash, UberEats, and half a dozen other companies are fighting over your restaurant delivery order. Hell, with Uber you can’t just order a car to your house; you can even order helicopters. But Robinhood might just have them all beat, as the financial services company announces plans to deliver maybe the most useful commodity of all: cold, hard currency.
This week, Robinhood announced a bunch of new services it’s going to start offering customers, like Robinhood Strategies for financial advice and Robinhood Cortex for investment analysis (via Gizmodo). Those also include Robinhood Banking, a luxury “private banking experience” for Robinhood Gold members — a $5/month or $50/year subscription.
Perks with Robinhood Banking include stuff like estate planning and access to tickets to exclusive events, but the one that’s really caught our attention is this offer to bring money right to your door: “Get cash delivered on-demand right to your doorstep, eliminating the need for an ATM.”
Understandably, there are multiple asterisks attached to that claim, and Robinhood clarifies that “cash delivery service coverage varies based on geographic location.” So far, the company has yet to explain just what that’s going to look like, but we wouldn’t be surprised if you have a little better luck requesting a cash delivery mid-day in a big city than at midnight on a holiday weekend out in the boonies.
The service is set to involve a combination of Robinhood’s own resources, third-party security companies, and partners to do the actual delivery business. While it’s not going into detail any more specific than that just yet, Robinhood says to look forward to the launch of Banking sometime this fall, when more info about cash delivery will become available.
While it’s a bit of an odd idea, we have to admit that we can see the utility in a service like this. ATMs aren’t always there when you need them to be, and if you know you’ve got plans coming up at a cash-only restaurant, ordering a Robinhood cash delivery on your phone might actually make a ton of sense. We’ll be very curious to see how well this ends up working once it finally goes live.
