Tellus App on Designing FinTech Products That Encourage Active Saving

A financial app can give users plenty of information without giving them much to do with it. Someone might open the app, check a balance, review a recent transaction or account update, and close it a few seconds later.

Tellus App gives users several ways to interact with the platform. Users can set savings goals, claim Boosts, take quizzes and build streaks.

Tellus is not a bank. Tellus is not FDIC-insured.

Founded in 2016 by Rocky Lee and T Zhu, Tellus App, Inc. is a FinTech and PropTech company. It has raised $26 million, including a $16 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz in 2022. Jeromee “JJ” Johnson serves as its President and CTO. Tellus holds a 4.9 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot from 220 reviews, as of October 2026.

The company’s consumer experience gets at a basic product question that login counts, visits and session time cannot answer on their own. Once someone opens a financial app, what are they given to do? For Tellus, participation starts with giving users clear actions that support saving.

One App, Four Ways to Participate

Tellus gives people several ways to use the app, and users choose which actions to take.

Goals make the experience feel more personal and intentional. A user identifies something they want to save toward and enters it into the app, giving them a clear objective.

Claiming a Boost is a deliberate choice. Users see an available Boost and decide whether to claim it. Under Tellus’s terms of service, a claimed Boost cannot be taken away or retroactively altered.

Quizzes require more time and attention. They ask users to thoughtfully respond to a set of questions on personal finance.

Streaks record consistent saving over time. Once a user starts one, they can keep it going and see their consistency build.

Users earn rewards by claiming Boosts. Completing a quiz, keeping a savings streak, reaching a goal or earning an achievement can each earn a Boost, under the terms of each offer. Larger financial goals may take weeks, months or even years to reach, which can make progress feel slow. Rewards give users something tangible along the way, as they save toward their goals. Beyond Boosts, users can use other Tellus products, including Reserve and Vault. Tellus continues to expand its savings tools, directly and with partners. In September 2026, it announced an expanded partnership with Central Bank of Kansas City, a certified Community Development Financial Institution. Tellus is not a bank. Tellus is not FDIC-insured.

Actions Show More Than Logins

There is an important difference between getting someone’s attention and giving that person something to do. A notification can generate a tap, and a balance screen can generate a page view. A tap or page view alone does not show what the user did next.

Participation is more specific. A user might set a goal, claim a Boost, complete a quiz or build a streak. Each action shows what the person did inside the app.

Tellus also gives users flexibility in how they engage. Two people could open the app the same number of times but use it in completely different ways. One might claim a Boost and leave, while another might complete a quiz, keep a streak going or work toward a goal. A login or session count would record both visits without showing those differences.

In FinTech, designing for participation can mean giving people several clear next steps and letting them decide which to take.

How Johnson’s Market Background Keeps Attention on Incentives

Johnson’s focus on product incentives comes from years in financial markets. At BATS Global Markets, he built the BATS Options Exchange and, after the Flash Crash of May 6, 2010, led the effort across U.S. exchanges to harmonize the rules for clearly erroneous trades and to modernize market-wide circuit breakers. He later led global markets at Miami International Holdings.

Those experiences have made him attentive to what financial products encourage people to do. Johnson has criticized products built around speculation and betting, especially when low friction, mobile access, instant gratification and constant availability make repeated activity easy. In a May 2026 Forbes Technology Council article, he argued that product teams should remove most friction but keep the kind that protects users from decisions they cannot easily undo. “Before removing friction, ask what it was doing,” he wrote.

For Johnson, the question is which behaviors a product rewards, and what those incentives produce for the people using it. Those outcomes matter because many households have little cushion: in 2025, 63 percent of U.S. adults said they would cover a $400 emergency expense entirely with cash or its equivalent, according to the Federal Reserve, a share unchanged since 2022.

In consumer FinTech, product design is never completely neutral. Every choice a platform makes about what to recommend, what to reward and what to make easy can influence which actions users are most likely to take.

Tellus is not a bank. Tellus is not FDIC-insured.