Sugar Wallet is an Auckland-based savings app that automates saving and converts it into 24-karat gold stored in Brinks vaults.
Users can start from one dollar and set weekly, fortnightly, or monthly contributions that buy allocated fine gold as a hedge against inflation and low bank interest, with the ability to pause or withdraw at any time. Dev Soni founded it with former Xero engineer Sophia Ritchie after finding his mother's default KiwiSaver fund was earning barely 1 percent a year.
Gold has always been easy to want and hard to actually own in small amounts. Buying allocated fine gold automatically from one dollar, and storing it in Brinks vaults, turns a familiar inflation hedge into something an ordinary saver can hold without ever handling it.
NZVC invested in Sugar Wallet from NZVC Fund I. We file the company under Fintech on the portfolio wall.
We backed Sugar Wallet because everyday savers want somewhere better than a low-interest bank account, and gold has always been hard for ordinary people to buy, store, and sell in small amounts. The app removes that friction with automated micro-saving into allocated fine gold, opening a familiar inflation hedge to a much wider audience. The founder built a simple, honest product for a global saver problem, and demand for alternatives to cash savings has kept rising.