River Financial doesn’t want to be just another exchange: It wants to be the world’s first Bitcoin financial institution.
Bitcoin-only exchange River Financial today announced that it is launching a mobile app on iOS.
This has been the number-one requested feature from its growing user base, the River team explained to Bitcoin Magazine, and it comes in the midst of a bitcoin price bull run that began in March 2020.
“We have seen tremendous growth in this client demographic through word of mouth referrals from friends and their kids,” Alex Leishman, River’s CEO and CTO, said. “People especially appreciate our client services (they have a lot of questions and want to talk to a person), the financial reporting tools (performance page) and how easy it is to get set up with an account.”
And it isn’t just younger, mobile-first retail investors requesting the service, Leishman explained.
“Interestingly, older clients are very heavy mobile users,” he said. “They are investors, doctors, lawyers, etc. and are up and about all day instead of sitting in front of a laptop like a young tech worker... A significant majority of our business is generated by clients born in the 1950s and 1960s.”
If older investors do capitalize on the mobile offering, River could gain ground with customers in an age group that has a significant amount of accumulated capital to deploy.
One of the hallmarks of River’s website is its simple user interface and its average of two minutes for onboarding. The exchange plans to bring that same approach to the mobile app, making sure it is very simple to execute buys and including support for a price widget.
River has no immediate plans to launch the app for Android, but users can expect support in 2022. Meanwhile, Coldcard hardware wallet users can expect support later this year.