Frequently asked questions

Beanstalk is a mobile app designed to help families work together to save money for their children's future.

The Beanstalk app makes it easy to build a meaningful pot of money for when your children reach 18 to give them the best possible launch into adult life.

Through the app, you can open accounts for all your children, and yourself, and then use our tools to put money aside. Grandparents and other friends / family can link using their Beanstalk app to your children so they can also help out.

The Beanstalk app brings together a number of tools to help you put money aside for yourself and your kids.

Through the app, you can see all of your accounts in one place, invite family and friends to link to your children, and set up one off or regular contributions. You can collect free savings on your shopping at KidStart's 2300+ retail partners and use our round ups tool to round up purchases you make and save the balance.

Grandparents and other donors can use their own Beanstalk app to contribute in the same great ways and can send and receive messages with the gifts they make.

Through the App you need to set up a Beanstalk Account for anyone you wish to save for (your children and/or yourself). If you have been invited to save for a child, their account will have been set up already by the parent.

The Beanstalk Account is a simple and flexible account through which any contributions are invested at your choice in the funds we offer. The Beanstalk child account is a Stocks & Shares Junior ISA and requires no minimum contribution to open.

The Beanstalk adult account is a Stocks & Shares ISA which can be opened with just £10.

Beanstalk has a simple and inexpensive fee structure, which consists an annual fee equal to 0.5% of the value of any Beanstalk Account.

The funds we offer have annual charges deducted directly from the funds themselves of 0.12-0.15%.

More details on charging are available in the terms and conditions; for example we may charge for paper copies of statements.

A Junior ISA is a tax-efficient way to save or invest for a child's future as all income and capital gains within a Junior ISA are exempt from UK tax personal tax. There are two types of Junior ISAs: Cash or Stocks & Shares. A child can only subscribe to one of each type during their childhood, and children cannot share a Junior ISA: each account is personal to one child.

The Beanstalk Junior ISA is a Stocks & Shares Junior ISA.

An ISA is a tax-efficient way to save or invest as all income and capital gains within an ISA are exempt from UK personal tax. There are several types of ISAs and the Beanstalk ISA is a Stocks & Shares ISA.

The Beanstalk ISA requires a contribution of at least £10 to open. There is no requirement to set up a regular payment unless you want to.

The child must be a UK permanent resident aged under 16 at time of application.

To open an account for a child, you must be the parent or legal guardian of the child and aged over 18. If the child has an existing Stocks & Shares JISA or a Child Trust Fund, you must transfer it to Beanstalk as children cannot have more than one Stocks & Shares JISA. (Note: a child can have both a cash and a Stocks & Shares JISA at the same time.)

The JISA annual contribution limit is £9,000 for 2024/25. Any contributions over this limit may at our discretion be invested through a general investment account (GIA) designated for the child until there is room in the tax free contribution limit in a following tax year

We will handle the transfer for you, liaising with your existing provider, and will tell you anything you need to do once you have applied for the Beanstalk JISA

Prior to their 18th birthday, we will contact the child through you to advise that they will become the owner of the Junior ISA and can access the savings. On the child's 18th birthday, the Junior ISA automatically converts into an adult ISA and the child will become legally entitled to manage the account. We will explain to the child how they can take over the account at that point.

Under HMRC rules, money cannot be withdrawn before the child's 18th birthday except in the case of the child's death or a terminal illness

No. Once a contribution has been made into a Junior ISA, it has been given to the child and is only accessible by the child once they are 18.

You must be over 18 and resident in the UK. We do not accept applications from US citizens. You cannot subscribe to more than one Stocks & Shares ISA in the current tax year; if you have done so, you will need to transfer this to Beanstalk.

The Beanstalk ISA requires a contribution of at least £10 to open. There is no requirement to set up a regular payment unless you want to.

The annual adult ISA allowance for 2024/25 is £20,000. Any contributions over this limit may at our discretion be invested through a general investment account (GIA) until there is room in the tax free contribution limit in a following tax year.

You can ask to withdraw money from your ISA at any time. If the money you wish to withdraw is held in investments, these will be sold on the next trading day which could be 7-10 working days after your request. Payments will be made to the bank account linked to your Beanstalk account via BACS once the cash is available within your account and this could take a further 5 working days.

You can only make one withdrawal request at any time.

Please note: investments in a Stocks & Shares ISA should be regarded as longer term investments.

You can choose to invest in two funds offered via Beanstalk. The two funds are the Fidelity Global index fund, which aims to track the performance of global stock markets and the Legal & General Cash Trust fund, which aims to provide returns in line with money market rates.

Your contributions will be allocated to the two funds according to the split you set when you apply and you can change this allocation through the app after the account is opened.

Buying and selling of funds happens daily on each working day.

Funds are priced based on the value of their underlying holdings and most funds will calculate and publish a price every working day typically at noon, meaning there is no continuous pricing of fund units during the day. (To check when your funds value, you should check the specific KIID for the fund).

When a contribution is received into a Beanstalk account, it triggers an order to be placed according to the allocation in place at the time. Orders will generally be routed by the custody provider to the appropriate fund manager for execution at the next available valuation point for the particular fund, which depending on when the cleared contributions are received in the account and the time taken to place the order could be the same day or the next working day.

For clarity, the forward pricing system used by funds means that you will not know the exact price at which you will buy or sell. Contributions made to your account are initially made into a pooled client account held by the Custody Provider before being reconciled to your Account and, although this will typically happen immediately, it can take longer so that we cannot guarantee when contributions made will be traded.

Purchases and sales of funds through Beanstalk are made daily on each working day. When cleared contributions are received into your account, an instruction is created to purchase investments in the proportion set by your allocation in place at that time

If you change your allocation, trades are automatically created for the next valuation point to adjust your existing holdings to your new allocations as well as changing how your contributions are invested going forward. For example: if your existing holdings are 90% by value in one fund and 10% in the other, moving your allocation to 50:50 will result in selling one fund and buying the other so that you end up with 50:50. This process can take up to 5 working days as we have to wait for the proceeds from the sale to settle before buying the other fund.

The L&G Cash Trust invests in lower risk, lower return investments such as short term deposits, government bonds and similar. The returns from a portfolio which is 100% invested in the L&G cash trust may be lower than putting money into a cash ISA or JISA with a bank or building society so we don't offer this as you may be better off contributing to a cash ISA/JISA if you want a 100% cash allocation.

No. Beanstalk does not provide any investment or tax advice. If you have any questions about investing, then you should contact a suitably qualified financial adviser.

Your money and investments are held under Financial Conduct Authority client money and asset rules by our Custody Provider, Seccl Custody Limited, who are authorised and regulated by the FCA.

Your investments are covered up to £85,000 under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Through Beanstalk, you can invite family and friends to save for any or all of your children. This will send them an email invite which they can accept or decline through their own app. If they accept, then they can use Beanstalk to contribute to your child.

You will be able to see any contributions they make. They will be able to view the contributions they have made to your children, but will not be able to view information on total value or contributions that you have made.

Congratulations! You've been invited by the parent to help save for a child to give them the best possible launch into adult life.

To accept the invitation, download the Beanstalk App and register or log in with the email address that the invite was sent to. Once you have logged in you will be given the opportunity to accept or decline the invitation.

The round up tool uses the Government-backed Open Banking initiative through which you can give your bank permission to let us securely display your bank data to you. This is read only, with no access to change any of your details or make transactions.

We have partnered with Bud, an FCA Authorised Account Information Service Provider, who manage the connection to your bank. To enable round ups, you need to give consent to your bank which you do through the links in the App.

If you have given permission, the round up tool displays your recent purchases and you can decide which to round up. The total round ups are collected from your bank by direct debit on a weekly basis.

Any round ups you make will be split between all the Beanstalk accounts you are linked to. For example: if you have 2 children and an account for yourself and you round up £5, each will receive £1.66 (with 1p left over!)

The app shows you purchases that you have made over the last 7 days. These are updated once a day so today you will see any purchases you made yesterday along with the round up amount. To round up you swipe the purchase to the right.

When you round up a purchase, the round up amount is added to the running total of round ups you have made during the week. You can manually adjust this running total up or down at any point through the App.

Through the app, you can enable /disable “auto round up”. Auto round up will automatically round up any purchase after 7 days.

The total round ups are collected from your bank by direct debit on a weekly basis as follows.

Every Monday, the weekly round up total for the previous week is calculated and the round up total is reset. We will notify you by email of the total amount to be collected through your direct debit and when it will be collected.

The direct debit is typically submitted to your bank for collection on the following Monday (or nearest working day after) at which point it will be split and allocated between the Beanstalk accounts you are linked to.

Note: the minimum direct debit value we can collect is £5. If your round up total is less than this, then no payment will be taken and it will carry forward the following week.

KidStart is the company behind the Beanstalk app. Established in 2008, KidStart has been helping families to save millions of pounds for their children for 12 years.

Shopping at any of the 2,500 retailers listed on KidStart earns money back for your children. With well known retailers such as John Lewis, Amazon, Sky and TUI, you can turn your family spending into an investment for your children's future.

Learn more about KidStart at www.kidstart.co.uk

Through Beanstalk you can set up a Direct Debit(s) to enable contributions and gifts to be taken. The Direct Debit must come from a bank account in your name and we will carry out verification checks on this. We will use separate Direct Debits for each account you have set up.

We will notify you by email when the Direct Debit instruction has been set up. this will typically be within a couple of days but can be delayed if we require further information from you. In these cases, we will let you know by email when the instruction will be set up.

Direct Debits are covered by the Direct Debit guarantee as outlined on the Direct Debit instruction and in the Direct Debit confirmation email that we send you.

We will use a different Direct Debit instruction for each account that you open. Each has a separate reference which we will communicate to you.

For example, if you have two children with Beanstalk accounts, you will see two separate Direct Debit references and payments on your bank account.

We use Fastpay Limited, an FCA authorised payment services provider to set up and arrange collection of Direct Debits.

Money collected by them via Direct Debit is put into a client money bank account operated under FCA client money and asset rules by our FCA authorised Custody Provider, Seccl Custody. The Direct Debit instruction on your bank account will appear as "Kidstart Limited t/a Beanstalk" or "Beanstalk" (depending on how much information your bank shows you on your account.)

We collect one off top ups and regular monthly contributions at different times as detailed below. We will notify you by email in advance of:

i) A first regular monthly contribution or any changes to timing and amount thereafter; ii) All one-off top ups or payments.

Regular Contributions

We collect regular contributions on the 18th of each month. If the 18th falls on a weekend or clashes with a public holiday then the collection date will be the first working day after the 18th.

We send payment instructions to the bank 5 working days in advance of the 18th. This means that if you set up or request a change to the regular instruction within 5 working days of the 18th, the change will be made the following month.

We will notify you by email 5 working days in advance of a new regular contribution or any change to the timing and amount thereafter.

One off top ups

We typically collect one off top ups weekly on Mondays. If the Monday clashes with a public holiday, then the collection date will be the first working day after.

We send payment instructions to the bank 5 working days in advance. This means that if you request a top up, we will collect it on Monday week after you requested the top up.

We will confirm your top up to you by email 5 working days in advance of collection so you know the exact day it is going.

We will notify you by email for every top up 5 working days in advance of collection.

To cancel or change your regular contribution, just click on tools on the app menu and then tap regular contributions. You will see all the accounts that you have open and the current regular contribution, click “Make Changes” and you can enter a new monthly amount or amounts. Click set new and Confirm and that is it.

If you want to cancel the monthly contribution, just set the amount to £0.

Please make sure you make the change by the 11th of the month to stop collection in that month.

See our detailed FAQs for account holders or please contact us with any further questions or feedback, we'd love to hear from you.