SibStar: Debit card and app for families living with Dementia
Introduction
Sibstar is a fintech product designed to help Dementia sufferers and their care-givers manage daily spending and finances. It comes with a debit card and a mobile app. Through the mobile app, the user who is suffering dementia or any family member helping them could easily manage their financial activities for the day.
The ultimate goal of this card and app is to ensure that a dementia patient does not over spend on things they shouldnt. More important, they are protected from online scams that could lead to loss of funds or ever identity theft. The many positive feedback from users of these useful fintech product shows that Sibstar is really delivering value as promised.
Lets get to know this fintech product more.
Dementia and managing finance
Dementia is a brain disease that really affects mental coordination in sufferers. The disease affects the ability of its victim to perform activities that require thinking and natural intelligence. As a result, the sufferer might forget things a lot and might struggle a lot with calculations, figures and math.
With regards to managing day-to-day finance and spending's, a dementia sufferer might easily over-price things when shopping alone. They might start buying things that are not necessary, or easily fall victim to scams because of the inability to intelligently handle calculations.
Families of dementia sufferers might thus need to provide someone that could help the person manage their finances. Or they could need a tool to help them monitor how the family member is doing in money matters. This is where Sibstar becomes really useful.
The solution - Sibstar
Sibstar is a two-in-one solution for families of dementia sufferers. The fintech product has a debit card which could be used to shop in physical stores and online. The card is connected with a mobile app where most of the setup is done. The dementia sufferer could use the card alone or with the assistance of a family member.
Based on the level of mental coordination, another family member might be asked to install and run the app. But if the Dementia level is so high that the sufferer cannot handle spending alone, then the care-giver will take care of both spending and having the app to monitor finances.
Below are some of the features of Sibstar that makes it cool for Dementia sufferers to manage finances:
- Usage limits: The family member helping to care for the dementia patient will be able to set limits on how much funds could be spent within intervals on the card. This of course would be done after checking their budget for that period. For example, if the daily spending limit was set in the app, it would decline paying for transaction amounts above the set limit. The same applies to monthly spending limits which will not allow any amount above that limit to be processed.
The essence of the spending limit is to protect the funds and help the dementia person spend only on things that are really necessary. And if they are scammed and they happen to try to use the card, that limit would protect them from such fraud.
- Usage location: The care-giver could also setup the card to decline transactions based on where they are initiated. For example, the card could be set to process or decline online transactions, physical transactions at shops on the street, or even the use of POS machines. Once the ideal shopping method or place for the dementia patient is identified, the other locations could be turned off. The idea is to ensure that money can only be spent in places agreed and approved by the family or care-giver.
Notifications: The app could notify the care-giver about any transactions that was done with the Sibstar card. This is another security feature that could be useful especially if unauthorized transaction alerts were received. The care-giver could take immediate actions to ensure that further transactions are not allowed or approved.
auto top-up: The card could be set up to automatically add funds from another account on a daily basis. The idea here is to make funds available always for the dementia sufferer to spend. This is especially useful if there was a daily spending limit set.
- Mastercard approved: The Sibstar debit card is issued in partnership with global payments giant Mastercard. Users are thereby assured that their cards would be accepted anywhere the mastercard logo is found.
For now, Sibstar is available only in the UK but will soon go global.
Conclusion
If there is a dementia sufferer in your family and they stay around the UK, you could consider using this service. But like you already know, this is not financial advice. Always do your own research first before getting involved. More resources on this could be found below:
Note: Thumbnail is mine.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
Dementia is a very unfortunate disease because it results in the loss of a loved one's personality (or one's own when the time comes).
I have had my grandmother with this disease and she started forgetting things or losing track of space such as going to another room or even being about to go outside when she really wanted to go to the bathroom.
In more severe cases it tends to hallucination, which if I know correctly, is called senile dementia.
The implementation of this card and the administration through an APP could improve the way in which this situation is addressed, which is very helpful because it relieves some of the concern of family members who must care for a person with this disease.
So sorry about your grandma suffering dementia. Its actually a tough situation when they act weird and couldnt do basic normal stuffs. Its great to have services like this Sibstar which makes fintech more inclusive for people with special needs.
I admire and encourage people like you as you help family members with special needs try to live a normal life. Its always difficult for everyone - especially the care-giver.