News

New Fintech App Aims To Improve Children’s Financial Literacy

A startup known as Leap has built an app to help kids track where their money is being spent, and to help them save more effectively.

Published

4 years ago

November 16, 2022

Nour Nasir

new fintech app aims to improve children's financial literacy

For children and young teens, it can be hard (and not to mention boring!) to get a handle on topics such as budgeting and saving. Money and financial matters aren’t exactly a top priority for youngsters, but they are vital subjects to master in order to be better prepared for adult life.

To that end, UAE-based startup Leap has an ambitious goal of helping young people to make better financial decisions and to improve basic money management skills and literacy. The fintech company has developed an app aimed at young people and their parents, which works to incentivize good budgeting and saving habits.

“Financial literacy is a core life skill that is not readily taught while growing up. Most kids get their first taste of financial responsibility when they go off to college without the oversight and knowledge on managing their money. We’re committed to changing this reality and empowering kids as young as 6 years old to understand, value, and manage their money,” says Ziad Toqan, CEO and Co-founder of Leap.

Parents can transfer a child’s allowance into the app or have funds appear when certain milestones are achieved (such as good school grades). Children using the service will get a prepaid Visa card linked to their Leap account, allowing them to use their balance however they see fit.

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As well as helping to promote better budgeting and sensible spending, the app also diverts unused funds to a savings account at the end of each week, which Leap hopes will encourage kids to spend less and save more.

The app is available on both Apple and Android devices and is suitable for children between 6 and 18 years of age. Leap is currently focused on the UAE, but has plans to expand into Saudi Arabia and Egypt in the future.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

6 days ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.