Chip offers a great savings rates – currently a massive 4.84%* with a Cash ISA, and 4.01%* with an Instant Access Account. You'll be able to get your money back whenever you like too. You can also save all automatically too (if you want to). 5 stars from us.
Not a good saver? Chip could be for you.
Aside from having one of the best savings interest rate, if you want a bit of help saving more, Chip can help you save cash by connecting with your bank account and reviewing all your transactions (let’s hope there’s not much to hide!), and works out how much you could afford to save.
After that, it takes small amounts of cash out of your account every few days – so small you hopefully won’t even notice, and puts it into a savings account where it can be invested with the aim of growing it further.
Sounds a bit complicated, but it’s simple really – the technology does all the work! And over time you’ll have lots of cash saved up without even realising it’s gone from your bank account.
There’s different types of savings and investment options, so you have a few choices of where you want your money to go – we’ll cover these later.
It’s pretty popular, there’s over 500,000 customers using Chip to save, and Chip claims the average person is able to save £3,000 per year!
It’s a great app to use too, and available on both Apple and Android, with a great rating of 4.6 out of 5 on Apple (but only 3.6 on the Google Play store).
Heads up: the interest rate on cash savings is 4.84%* – which is great. And it’s FSCS protected (more on that below).
If you’ve heard enough already. Here’s where to download Chip¹ and get started saving!
If not, let’s dive in a bit more and see if it’s right for you.
Is Chip good for beginners?
Yes. Chip is perfect for beginners in fact. It’s designed to help those people who find saving quite hard, and well, not very good at it!
The downside to investing for beginners is you do have to make a few decisions about where your money is invested, and we've listed your options below. It’s easy to pick up though.
You can also just save your money as cash too and earn interest in return if you don’t want to invest. (You’d likely make a lot more money over time if you did invest though.)
Cash savings accounts
Easy Access Saver
With the Easy Access account, you guessed it, you can get your cash back easily, if you need it, while still getting a great interest rate. Deposits and withdrawals are both instant.
Although there are some limitations, you can only withdraw money 3 times within 12 months. After the third, your interest rate will reduce by 1.10% for the remainder of the 12 month period.
Currently, there’s a bonus rate of 0.77% for the 12 months. Check the Chip website¹ to learn more and check the latest rate.
Instant Access Account
This is your classic savings account, you put money in and you get money back in return, in interest. The current interest rates are some of the best out there – check the Chip app¹ for the latest rates.
And as it’s ‘instant access’, that means you can withdraw your money whenever you like!
You can also save from as little as £1, and as much as £250,000, and it’s FSCS protected (more on that later).
And, there's no fees to open and use this account.
In fact, it's so good, we've rated it the best easy access savings account in the UK.
If you've heard enough and keen to get saving, here's where to download Chip¹.
Prize Savings Account
Now this is pretty cool. Remember Premium Bonds?.. Nah neither do we… (they pay a monthly prize).
Well, Premium Bonds, and Chip’s Prize Savings Account is where you add money into an account, in this case just a simple account on the Chip app. And then every month you are automatically entered into a prize draw to win £10,000. Not bad right?!
Every £10 you save is an extra entry. And you need to have at least £100 in your account to qualify for the next prize draw.
There’s also 250 prizes of £10 per month too. And all of this happens every month. And you can win more than once.
The idea is it’s a savings account for your cash, but instead of earning a little bit of interest each year like a regular savings account, you just might win big. And you’ll probably win a few £10s every now and again.
It’s completely free to enter, there’s no fee with the savings account. You can withdraw your money whenever you want too.
Sound interesting? Learn more on the Chip app¹.
Investing with Chip
Chip has 2 options to invest, investing in investment funds, and investing in real things (we cover both below). You’ll start with investing in funds, and then if you like, can branch out into alternative investments (investing in real things). But don’t worry, it’s all easy to do and you can automate it.
Investing in investment funds
This is investing your money in Stocks & Shares with the aim of growing your money over time. A share of a company means you own a tiny piece of the company.
A fund is lots of different companies put together into one single investment. Simple. They can be grouped together by themes, such as companies in the UK, USA, across the world or even industries such as companies building electric vehicles or in healthcare.
There’s even an ethical investment option. Learn more about that on the Chip app¹.
Investing in real things
This is a bit different to your normal investment options with other investment apps. With Chip you can invest in things like cars, fine wine and art – just like the mega rich. These are called ‘alternative assets’.
When you invest you would own a small portion of the asset, for instance, if an expensive whisky cost £100,000, and you invested £100, you would own 0.1%.
Investing in this way would also be within a separate account and wouldn’t be part of an ISA.
Can I invest in Crypto?
You can invest in crypto companies, but not crypto itself. You would have to buy a share in an investment fund which has shares in crypto businesses. You can’t buy things like Bitcoin and Ethereum, or any other coin yourself.
If you’re interested in buying crypto, check out eToro¹ (here’s our eToro review), and our best crypto exchanges.
Investment account options
Stocks & Shares ISA
With a , you are allowed to invest up to £20,000 per year and everything you make within your account is completely tax-free, forever! Not bad right?
You’re only allowed to pay into one Stocks & Share ISA per tax year however (April 6th to April 5 the following year), so if you’ve already paid into one somewhere else this year, you can open a General Investment Account, until next year.
By the way, you can’t invest in a Stocks & Shares ISA unless you get ChipX. More on that below.
General Investment Account (GIA)
This account is not tax-free unfortunately. You can pay in as much as you like each year, but you’ll pay tax on anything over £3,000 in profit, within a tax year (April 6th to April 5th) – and only when you sell your investments – so this is unlikely unless you have lots of investments! Learn more about a General Investment Account.
The tax you could pay is Capital Gains Tax, Income Tax and Dividend Tax.
Personal pension
Unfortunately, there’s no personal pension. If you’re looking to save within a pension, check out PensionBee¹ – they’re super easy to use, have a great track record of investing and low fees. Plus you'll get a free 25% bonus on anything you put in.
Check out the best pension providers for the full range.
How much is Chip?
There’s 2 account options with Chip – a free account and a paid account (called ChipX). Let’s take a look at both:
Free account
This is the standard account and lets you do all the basic things, such as connect to your bank account, start automatically saving your money, and set targets (goals).
You’ve only got a few simple investment options, and you can only open a General Investment Account (so you’d have to pay tax in future if you begin making over £3,000 per year in profit).
It’s not entirely free, however, you’ll be paying a fee to Chip of 0.5% of your savings per year when they’re invested, so it’s a little misleading. Plus the fund you are invested in will have their own fees, which can range from 0.06% - 1% per year.
ChipX
This is the paid account, and it’s £5.99 every 28 days (if paid annually it's £65.05). You’ll get everything on the free account, plus the ability to open a , so you can start saving tax-free (highly recommended!).
With ChipX, compared to the free plan, you get access to a much wider range of investment options, such as ethical investment options, clean energy, and even crypto funds.
You’ll also have access to the alternative assets section we mentioned above, which is investing in art, fine wine, cars, and things like that.
And importantly, there’s no more fees on the total amount of your investments (the 0.5% fee on the free plan). So, you’ll benefit a lot when your savings and investments build up – the more you save, technically the cheaper it gets as it’s a flat fee (relative to the total amount in your investments).
That’s a pretty big deal. If you’re investing a fair amount of money, you could end up saving quite a lot (plus the ability to open a Stock & Shares ISA to save tax free).
Learn more about ChipX on the Chip app¹.
Customer support
The customer service is pretty good. They’ve got live-chat within the app, so you can actually message them when you need to, they’re available from 8am to 8pm throughout the week.
There’s also a help centre with articles to help you if you get stuck. And you can also send an email if you’ve got a bit more time to wait for a response.
Is Chip safe?
Yep! It’s authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
That means they’ve been approved and are trusted to look after your money, and your cash is protected up to £85,000 with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).
Your money is also held within the investments themselves, not Chip – so even if Chip were to go out of business, you’d still get your investments back. It's super safe.
Note: if you invest in ‘alternative assets’ with Chip, like fine wines, cars and whisky, you won’t have any FSCS protection.
Chip customer reviews
Most customers like it. It’s got a pretty great rating on Trustpilot, the popular reviews website, with a score of 3.9 out of 5, from over 1,000 reviews too.
Common reviews are that the customers love the excellent customer service and, well, simply the app itself – helping you save cash!
Chip pros and cons
Let's recap and run through the pros and cons of saving and investing with Chip:
Pros
- Epic savings rate
- Chance to win £10,000 every month
- Perfect for beginners
- Good customer support
- Start for free
- Easy to understand investments
- Invest in real assets
Cons
- ChipX is slightly on the expensive side if you don't have much invested
- Limited investment options
- Not much else!
Our thoughts
We like Chip. We’re on a mission ourselves here at Nuts About Money to help people learn about money and savings, so anyone else doing it too is great!
It’s a solid app that helps you save without even thinking about it. Perfect for those of us struggling to save money, but it goes one step further and helps you invest that money with a view to growing it over time.
The Instant SavingsAccount is pretty unbeatable. even when it comes to the best savings accounts –it's one of the top rates out there, the app is super easy to use, and you can get your money back in minutes. You can't beat that can you?If you're just looking for cash savings, here's where to download Chip¹.
With investing, it's slightly on the expensive side at £5.99 every 28 days for the fully loaded version – however you do get what you pay for with more investment options and an ISA to save tax-free (very important account for investing) – and importantly removes the 0.5% fee on your investments, so the more you invest, the cheaper is gets!.
The customer service is great too, and the app itself is easy to use. There’s not many negatives to mention!
Overall Chip is a great option for saving – we're giving it a big 5 stars. Learn more and get started on the Chip app¹.
The legal stuff
*AER (variable tracker). Which stands for Annual Equivalent Rate, and means the money you would make if you left your money in your account for 12 months without touching it (so the interest can itself earn interest).
