Score, the dating app for people with good to excellent credit, was shut down in early August, the company confirmed to TechCrunch.
As TechCrunch previously reported, Score was originally supposed to be a pop-up app and only available for 90 days. That was in February. But user interest was so high that parent company Neon Money Club decided to keep the app open for six months. During that time, it was able to record around 18,000 users, achieve 8,000 matches and gain a lot of insight into the current dating scene, the company told TechCrunch.
“Score was created to make people aware of their credit scores and to start a broader conversation about it,” Luke Bailey, co-founder of Neon Money Club, told TechCrunch. “We’ve achieved our goal. We made it clear to everyone from the beginning that this was only meant to be temporary.”
When asked about a possible acquisition, Bailey added that “larger dating companies have their hands full trying to maintain the relevance of dating apps.”
“Score has shown that people have a desire for lifestyle apps that have a higher purpose than exclusivity or simply connecting people,” he said. “We’re excited to have our lessons and insights made available to one of the leaders in this space. Call me.”
However, Score did obtain a ton of data that paints an interesting picture of the current dating scene. (The company confirmed that it doesn’t store any sensitive information from users and runs a rigorous background check consistent with its background in the banking industry.) According to its data, millennial users had the highest credit scores of any group, as well as the largest credit score gap between genders: Millennial men had an average score 11% higher than women. The company also said that Generation Z could close that gap, as men only have about 3% higher credit scores than women. Generation X, meanwhile, had the smallest gap between genders on the app, at just 0.4%.
“The most alarming data point we saw was that Gen Y men had an 11 percent advantage in credit scores over Gen Y women,” Bailey said. “That tells an important story about how the most educated generation of women in history was impacted by the enormous costs associated with reaching that milestone: college costs, student loans. It tells a story about how that affected their credit scores. The smaller differences seen in Gen Z give hope that maybe the next generation will find a way around that burden.” He hopes policymakers can take a closer look and find ways to close that economic gender gap, he said.
The app sparked heated debate after its launch in February. Some praised the idea, others called it classist. Bailey rejected the idea of classism at the time; he did so again with the announcement of the app’s shutdown. He said that anyone calling the app classist hadn’t read the mission behind it, and that the app had connected many good people who wanted to prioritize their financial health; that it had made people aware of their credit scores; and that it had connected people with educational resources to help them with their credit issues.
“The first and most important thing they learned is what we wanted them to know: their credit score,” Bailey said.
Neon Money Club was founded in 2021 to teach financial literacy. Last year, it became the first black-owned tech company to launch a credit card with AMEX. Luke says the company probably won’t build another dating app, but he wouldn’t be surprised if the company “finds another crazy way to shine a light on the importance of financial wellness.”
Nevertheless, Neon Money Club has a number of new projects in the pipeline, such as developing additional experiences around the AMEX card, the time investment account and a new wellness studio.
“We are currently developing powerful content in our own unique way that we believe will have a big impact in finance and beyond,” Bailey said. “Stay tuned.”
