Questions, answered

SoSave is a modern app for community savings. It brings the savings-circle tradition that millions of families already trust, known as Susu, Pardner, Tanda, Hui, Paluwagan, Chit Fund, and many other names, together with personal savings goals, in one place. You keep the culture and the trust of saving with your people, and add clear schedules, reminders, and tools on top.

SoSave never holds, pools, or lends your money. Your funds stay in your own account. SoSave runs the schedule and the rotation, who contributes when, and whose turn it is to receive, but it does not take custody of the money and never lends it out. When it is your turn, you receive the full amount. This is the core of how SoSave is built, and it is what makes it different from products that hold or lend your funds.

Anyone who wants to save with discipline, on their own or with a group they trust. It is built for the communities where rotating savings has always been a part of life, and for anyone new to the idea who wants a simple, transparent way to save toward something.

Create a free account and set your first Goal, either by talking it through with the SoSave assistant, which builds the Goal as you answer a few questions, or with Quick Setup if you prefer to fill in the details yourself. From there you can join a public circle, start your own, or keep saving toward a personal Goal.

A circle, also called a Pool, is a group of people who each contribute a set amount on a regular schedule. Each cycle, one member receives the full round of contributions. The turn rotates until everyone has received once. It is the digital version of a Susu, Pardner, Tanda, or Hui.

Say ten members each contribute two hundred dollars a month. Each month the group total, two thousand dollars, goes to one member. Over ten months, every member receives once. If you receive early, you have gotten your full amount before you finished contributing. If you receive late, you have effectively saved the whole way through. Everyone puts in the same and everyone receives the same. SoSave keeps the schedule, sends reminders, and records every contribution and payout so the whole circle can see it.

No. SoSave never pools or holds the money. Your funds stay in your own account, and the movement runs through a regulated payments partner, not through SoSave. SoSave coordinates the timing and the turns. You always receive one hundred percent of the round when it is your turn.

Browse the public circles in the app and send a request to join one that fits your cadence and contribution amount. The circle's operator reviews and approves requests. Once you are in, you are placed in the rotation and you will see your turn in the schedule. You can also be invited directly by an operator, by link, email, or WhatsApp.

An operator is the person who runs a circle. Anyone can start one. Operators set the circle up, its name, tradition, size, contribution amount, and schedule, approve members, and keep the rotation on track. You become an operator simply by starting a circle; it is not a separate account type.

Use the create-circle flow. You choose a name, the tradition it follows, a circle icon, how many members can join, the contribution amount per cycle, and the schedule. You can then invite people directly or open it to public requests.

Traditional circles rely on trust between people who know each other, and that is still the heart of SoSave. On top of that, operators can turn on optional trust features when they start a circle, for members who are saving with people they do not know as well. These are choices the operator makes, not requirements on every circle. Community circles among people who trust each other stay simple and friction-free.

They matter. Susu, Pardner, Tanda, Hui, Paluwagan, Chit Fund, and the others are living traditions with their own histories. SoSave lets each circle carry the name its community uses, and defaults to the plain-language name Community Savings when no tradition is chosen.

A Goal is something you are saving toward, a house down payment, a wedding, a business fund, an emergency cushion. SoSave turns the target into a plan: a realistic monthly pace based on your amount and your timeline, so the Goal becomes something you can see and track.

A Focus Goal is a personal, individual Goal, just you saving toward your own target. Its action is Contribute. A Group Goal is a shared Goal where several people save toward one total together, each at their own pace. Its action is Pledge. Contribute is for individual Goals; Pledge is for group Goals. They are kept distinct throughout the app.

When you start a Goal, you can talk it through with the assistant. It asks a few plain questions, what you are saving for, your target amount, your timeline, and how often you want to contribute, and builds the Goal field by field as you answer, working out a monthly pace you can actually keep. Nothing happens to your account until you confirm. If you would rather not chat, Quick Setup lets you fill in the same fields yourself.

It is your target divided across your timeline, adjusted to a cadence you choose, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. SoSave shows you the per-cycle amount so you know what the Goal asks of you before you commit.

Yes. Many people use a circle to power a Goal, the payout from a circle can go straight toward what you are saving for. Goals give you the target and the pace; circles give you a group rhythm and, when it is your turn, a lump sum.

SoSavePay is the money layer of SoSave, how money moves in and out as you save and as circles pay out. It covers your funding source, your balance, your contributions, and your payouts, all built on the never-pooled principle: your money stays yours, and SoSave never holds or lends it.

You link your own bank account, securely and read-only, through Plaid, and fund a prepaid balance you control. Contributions draw from that balance on schedule. SoSave sees enough to keep the rotation accurate; it never takes your bank login and never moves money on its own outside what you set up.

When it is your turn, you receive the full round, one hundred percent of the contributions for that cycle. Payouts run through the regulated payments partner to your own account. SoSave never sits in the middle holding the pot.

The model is simple and transparent. Savers pay SoSave nothing to join or participate in a circle, ever. Operators pay one and a half percent on each payout their circle makes, with their first five circles free. Some circles carry a one-time join fee set by the operator and paid to the operator, always shown to you before you join, never taken from the pot, and refunded if you leave before the circle starts; SoSave takes no share of it. SoSave's fees are always separate from the savings rail. They never come out of your payout, you always receive the full amount.

Your money stays in your own account, never pooled with others and never lent out, which removes an entire category of risk that pooled products carry. Bank connections are handled by Plaid, so SoSave never stores your bank credentials, and identity is verified to keep circles trustworthy. Money movement runs through a regulated partner.

SoSave is rolling out real money movement as it launches. Some money features run in a preview or demo form before the full rails switch on, and the app is clear about what is live versus in preview at each step. The never-pooled structure is the same in every case.

SoSave Institution is the part of SoSave that lets a verified institution, such as a bank or credit union, offer community savings circles to its members, with the same never-pooled structure and added benefits like earned interest. It is how the tradition connects to regulated institutions without changing what makes it trustworthy.

An institutional circle is offered through a verified institution and can carry benefits a peer circle cannot, most notably interest earned on your balance while you save, shown with a clear rate and a plain Truth in Savings style disclosure. It still rotates the same way, and your funds still stay in your own account. The institution is the holder of record for the funds and the provider of any interest; SoSave runs the coordination.

No. The never-pooled principle holds here too. Your money stays in your own account at the institution, it is not pooled with other members, and it is never lent out as part of the circle. SoSave is the program layer that runs the rotation; the institution is the system of record.

It marks a circle offered by a real, verified partner institution, with the disclosures that come with a regulated provider, such as the interest rate and the savings terms.

Not yet. The institutional experience you see in the app today uses a fictional demo institution, Heritage Mutual, purely to illustrate how it will work. It is clearly marked as a demo, and no institutional partners are signed at this time. When real partners come on, they will be shown as verified with their own real terms.

No. Never pooled, never lent. Your money stays in your own account; SoSave runs the schedule only.

Yes. You always receive one hundred percent of your round. Fees are separate from the rail and never reduce your payout.

One and a half percent charged to operators on each payout, with their first five circles free. Savers pay SoSave nothing. If a circle has a join fee, that fee goes to the operator who runs it, not to SoSave. That is it.

Bank links go through Plaid, so SoSave never holds your bank login. Identity is verified to keep circles trustworthy, and money moves through a regulated partner.

English, Spanish, Haitian Kreyol, and Jamaican Patois, across the app and the assistant.