By nickel and dime, Christian Zimmerman (B.B.A. '15) and Nate Washington are taking on the colossus of student loan debt. Their mobile app, Qoins, rounds up each of your daily debit card purchases to the nearest dollar and funnels the digital change to your creditors, slowly but surely whittling down your balance.
It seems like a preposterous way to wrestle with debt. Handfuls of pennies against the average student loan balance of $35,000? Ice has better odds in the desert.
But there's a genius in the app: It won't let you undo your own progress. Qoins applies your change to your debt by depositing it straightaway. You can’t snatch that money back.
To make this clearer: When you make a $3.43 purchase, Quoins rounds up the transaction to $4 and bags the 57 cents of change for your debt. Qoins charges a $1.99 fee each month in exchange for directing the money into the untouchable monthly pot. The average Qoins customer accrues $65 a month in loose change, Washington says.
"Taking charge of your finances takes consistency, and what we’re trying to do is automate the consistency," Zimmerman says. “All these little things you do on a daily basis add up incrementally and end up being quite a bit of money by the end of a month.”
Zimmerman and Washington are leading more than 16,000 users in getting out of debt, including a Kansas surgeon with $250,000 of medical school loans to pay back. Since Qoins started in January 2017, they have helped 62,000 people pay off $8 million worth of debt. By the end of 2019, the partners expect the number to rise to $10 million.
That’s a lot of change.
GRIST FOR THE MILL
Zimmerman and Washington, close friends, are also well acquainted with debt. They had $71,000 in debt between them in 2016 when they began collaborating on their startup.
Qoins was born out of Zimmerman’s own need. He had debt, and he wanted a personal solution. He looked at another app called Acorns, but it deposited his digital loose change in investment accounts instead of paying down balances. He wanted something to combat debt that was also foolproof against the impulse to party on a Friday night with accumulated change.
"Anyone can save, but we often don’t,” Zimmerman says.
Zimmerman envisioned a way to eliminate revolving debt. Many people make the minimum payment on their credit card but then add on to their balance with more purchases. With Qoins’ help, however, someone can get in the habit of saving those nickels and dimes to erase debt more quickly and achieve financial freedom.
The app doesn’t just micromanage your debt, though. It also curbs impulsive purchases and changes behaviors, forcing people to develop better financial habits and transform into better, more disciplined decision-makers.
“It’s like going to the gym," Zimmerman says. "You don't see results immediately, but once you’ve done it consistently for a while, they become undeniable.”
Financial apps typically fall into one of two categories — either round-up automation or financial coaching. Qoins is different because it marries one with the other. As the app helps users pay off debts with its automated deposits, it also directs users to meet periodically with financial advisers, who evaluate each individual’s situation and offer counsel.
The Qoins co-founders are also taking on credit card debt, now the No. 3 source of debt in the U.S. since student loans moved up to No. 2. Only mortgage loans constitute a bigger debt market.
Qoins can micromanage your car debt, too. Later this year, it will add a service to help you accrue an “emergency fund,” which most Americans do not have. Qoins can also be used for payroll deductions toward debt or savings.
“These are exactly the types of areas that fintech [technological innovation in the financial services sector] could revolutionize,” says Ajay Subramanian, the Bruce A. Palmer Professor at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business who specializes in financial economics. “It alleviates constraints and facilitates a wide range of productive activities, including paying for college education.”
But what about the loose change you find between the couch cushions or on the car floorboard? Qoins is digital, after all.
Zimmerman and Washington collect their stray coins and pass them out to the homeless population downtown where they live and work. Their company’s charitable giving program, Qoins Cares, makes contributions as well.
That’s only fitting. A leading cause of homelessness? Debt.
Christian Zimmerman (B.B.A. ’15), co-founder of Qoins, at the company's downtown office. Zimmerman uses his own app to pay down his personal student debt.
Christian Zimmerman (B.B.A. ’15), co-founder of Qoins, at the company's downtown office. Zimmerman uses his own app to pay down his personal student debt.
A COMMITMENT OF THE HEART
Before he could take on debt, Zimmerman had to take on something even more onerous. Heart disease.
In late 2016, after just a few months of working with Washington, Zimmerman found himself having to take hot showers to calm the chills running through his body. For two months, he felt drained. He kept thinking it was the flu or some other nasty virus and that he’d just push through.
It was worse than that. He had endocarditis, an infection inside the chambers and valves of the heart. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, Zimmerman had a 40 percent chance of dying within a year. Born with a congenital heart defect, Zimmerman underwent open-heart surgeries as an infant and at 16. The infection is a byproduct.
“I'm a very energetic person, but I started feeling so tired I didn't want to do anything but come home and sleep,” he says. “I started losing weight. It’d be hot outside, but I'd be really cold.”
Zimmerman was 24 and didn’t understand how serious the illness was. He had just quit his 9-to-5 job and was working on the side to pay the bills while he and Washington tried to get Qoins ready to start up in January 2017.
Zimmerman was hospitalized for a week to get antibiotic treatment. Instead of pushing Qoins aside while he recovered, he pressed on and even had Washington film him pitch investors for startup capital from his hospital bed.
“I wasn’t going to stop. I was too committed to getting this company off the ground,” Zimmerman says.
Zimmerman was released from the hospital, but a nurse had to visit him at home for six weeks to provide further treatment and monitoring until the bacteria went dormant.
Meanwhile, Qoins raised $800,000 and debuted on time. Almost three years later, the company now supports six employees in a downtown office.
Zimmerman’s illness cemented his bond with Washington, partly because Zimmerman pushed through instead of collapsing in self-pity.
“That’s how you find out what somebody is made of,” Washington says. “He didn’t miss a beat. He kept fighting through it and came out the other side, and we still had the business. If I had any doubts early on about our working together long-term, those doubts were squashed.”
Zimmerman also pushed through for his parents: his mother, Reyna, an immigrant from El Salvador, and his father, Steven, a retired airplane mechanic with the U.S. Air Force.
“They’re my role models,” he says.
A COMMITMENT OF THE HEART
Before he could take on debt, Zimmerman had to take on something even more onerous. Heart disease.
In late 2016, after just a few months of working with Washington, Zimmerman found himself having to take hot showers to calm the chills running through his body. For two months, he felt drained. He kept thinking it was the flu or some other nasty virus and that he’d just push through.
It was worse than that. He had endocarditis, an infection inside the chambers and valves of the heart. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, Zimmerman had a 40 percent chance of dying within a year. Born with a congenital heart defect, Zimmerman underwent open-heart surgeries as an infant and at 16. The infection is a byproduct.
“I'm a very energetic person, but I started feeling so tired I didn't want to do anything but come home and sleep,” he says. “I started losing weight. It’d be hot outside, but I'd be really cold.”
Zimmerman was 24 and didn’t understand how serious the illness was. He had just quit his 9-to-5 job and was working on the side to pay the bills while he and Washington tried to get Qoins ready to start up in January 2017.
Zimmerman was hospitalized for a week to get antibiotic treatment. Instead of pushing Qoins aside while he recovered, he pressed on and even had Washington film him pitch investors for startup capital from his hospital bed.
“I wasn’t going to stop. I was too committed to getting this company off the ground,” Zimmerman says.
Zimmerman was released from the hospital, but a nurse had to visit him at home for six weeks to provide further treatment and monitoring until the bacteria went dormant.
Meanwhile, Qoins raised $800,000 and debuted on time. Almost three years later, the company now supports six employees in a downtown office.
Zimmerman’s illness cemented his bond with Washington, partly because Zimmerman pushed through instead of collapsing in self-pity.
“That’s how you find out what somebody is made of,” Washington says. “He didn’t miss a beat. He kept fighting through it and came out the other side, and we still had the business. If I had any doubts early on about our working together long-term, those doubts were squashed.”
Zimmerman also pushed through for his parents: his mother, Reyna, an immigrant from El Salvador, and his father, Steven, a retired airplane mechanic with the U.S. Air Force.
“They’re my role models,” he says.
CAPITAL COLLABORATION
Washington is the genius you often read about, the unconventional entrepreneur who shares no bond with the business world. He’s a chess champion, and he taught himself to code with library books when he was 15, but he’s 28 and didn’t finish college. He’s two semesters short of a criminal justice degree at Georgia State.
But the term “drop-out” hardly applies to Washington. He doesn’t dislike school. He’s just busy with things that make more sense for the moment. The first time Washington took a break from Georgia State, he moved back to Savannah, Ga., and built a successful app called OnTheRocks for bar owners hunting new business. The second time he walked away from school, Zimmerman and Qoins were at the door.
Back in July 2016, Washington overheard Zimmerman telling a group of people about Qoins at Atlanta Tech Village, a startup hub in Buckhead. Washington idled nearby and continued to listen. While Zimmerman had a good idea, he didn’t have the technical expertise to pull it off.
Nevertheless, Washington didn’t barge in and tell Zimmerman, “I’m your guy.”
Washington wanted some time to test the idea behind Qoins first and see if it had legs. He spent a week surfing among friends and acquaintances, asking what they thought about an app that grinds on debt with loose change and also curbs impulse buys. They approved, and Washington was encouraged. So, he started fiddling around with code for a bank login prototype for Qoins without telling Zimmerman.
“I just wanted to see if I could do it first without wasting his time,” Washington says. “I also wanted to check out his ego and see where he was coming from. When I’m working with people, I need to know they're committed — if they're hungry.”
Qoins appealed to Washington because money fascinates him — not because he’s greedy, but because of the way it works in our culture, its power and the respect it commands. He once worked as a bank teller and became adept at spotting counterfeit bills, particularly $5 bills that had been washed and reprinted as $50s. Washington thought he would go into federal law enforcement and chase white-collar bad guys who abused money.
These days, the bad guy he chases is debt. Washington had his own run-in with debt and the obsequiousness it demands.
“I took out credit cards I didn’t really respect,” he says. “I made some money mistakes early on, but later, I started working with money every day. Eventually, I learned how to respect it and understand the gravity of debt.”
Nate Washington, a former Georgia State student and the brains behind the computer code that makes Qoins tick.
Nate Washington, a former Georgia State student and the brains behind the computer code that makes Qoins tick.
Washington and Qoins were compatible, but the opportunity almost slipped away.
When Zimmerman and Washington met for coffee at Atlanta Tech Village in late summer 2016, Zimmerman figured Washington was still just kicking the tires on Qoins. They were chatting back and forth about ideas for the app when Zimmerman made it known he wanted to move. He told Washington he was about to meet with an app development shop and get serious. Washington jumped.
“Let me show you what I’ve done,” he told Zimmerman, turning his computer screen toward him.
“Wait, what … you’ve already built a bank login code?” Zimmerman said in astonishment.
“He was blown away I’d already explored it that far,” Washington recalls.
Zimmerman took Washington to the meeting with the development shop. Even though the developers were going to charge Zimmerman upwards of $30,000, they dropped out when they saw Washington was now a serious player.
The partnership blossomed, despite Zimmerman’s illness.
While Washington was infatuated with Zimmerman’s zeal for Qoins, Zimmerman discovered his counterpole in Washington, a detail-driven computer scientist. It greatly helped that they shared the same level of empathy for people on the bottom rung, those stung by debt.
“In business, it’s a good idea to find people smarter than you, and Nate is way, way smarter than I am,” Zimmerman says. “While I’m trying to get to the last step — starting at one and jumping to 10 — he’s doing each step thoroughly, one at a time. You know, details.”
While they were building their business, Washington had a personal use for Qoins.
“I'm on track to own my car about 15 months sooner than anticipated,” he says. “And I think I'm going to save about $3,000 worth of interest.”
Like Zimmerman, Washington is influenced by the downtown community. The co-founders see the destitute and hope their app can help people avoid the throes of crushing debt and its power to push you out into the streets without a home.
“We’re always around people who are on the bottom,” Washington says. “That’s going to give you a bigger heart.”
With Qoins, Zimmerman and Washington have merged the nuts and bolts of solid fintech innovation with the emotion and drama that attend crippling indebtedness and, in Zimmerman’s case, even bodily illness.
“To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to fall in love with the problem you're solving, not just the idea of running a business,” Washington says. “So, for us, we want to get messages from people three or four years from now that say, ‘Hey, I’m deactivating my account! You helped me, and I don’t have any more debt.’ Just seeing people post about their experiences on App Store reviews means a lot.”
Now a few years into their joint venture, the pair know they’ve planted a flag they believe in.
“It’s humbling to have an impact on somebody’s life,” Zimmerman says. “It’s just humbling.”
*Ray Glier is a former sports editor and now reports for The New York Times, USA TODAY, The Boston Globe, The Miami Herald, CNN and more.
Photos by Steven Thackston
Illustration by Reid Schulz (B.F.A. '18)
