CashMap Founder and CEO Richard Moore wants to make financial decisions easy, fun and localized through the CashMap app, an all-in-one resource for financial literacy and empowerment in the North Carolina that he built in the Triad area.
The platform offers residents a consumer-facing mobile app that gamifies personal finance, simulating different financial scenarios and enabling users to learn more about their money in a safe, controlled environment.
On the other end, CashMap offers a business-to-business web platform that helps local banks and nonprofits identify what kinds of financial resources and education residents are engaging in. Those same organizations are then able to prioritize and tailor their resources accordingly.
“CashMap is a privacy-first community intelligence infrastructure system,” Moore said. “On the resident side, we help build confidence for the residents in making financial decisions through education simulators and resource discovery, and on the community side, we help nonprofits and foundations document that activity and help them improve their work.”
What CashMap offers
Moore, who is currently in school for accounting, said he is fascinated with digital calculators. He wanted to develop an interactive, UI-friendly way for people to contextualize the financial calculations they might be making. Accordingly, CashMap now uses information from users about their personal finances and goals to curate micro lessons and games specific to individuals and based on sources like the FDIC or U.S. Treasury.
Users can “level up” by accruing XP and earning badges and artifacts that comprise a game experience. Meanwhile, with an eye on this activity, banks and institutions can learn about what local residents are engaging in—and what they might want more of in terms of financial education.
Beyond CashMap’s core functionality, Moore emphasized that it’s a privacy-first platform that focuses on creating a safe learning space for users. He specified that the data on the backend cannot be traced back to a individual user, meaning that those users can feel safe about sharing financial goals, tendencies, or other information.
“That’s part of our philosophy of creating a safe space, a place for people to learn and grow without compromising their identity,” Moore said. “I know we’re living in a time where a lot of people are nervous about the Flock cameras and surveillance and things of that nature. So we just really wanted to create a platform that gives control back to the residents, and provide more tools for nonprofits and banks.”
Building a base
The mobile app is currently in a controlled pilot stage with a user concentration specifically within the Piedmont Triad area. Moore aims to have the it loaded up and publicly available on Google Play and the Apple App store early this fall.
The app is completely free for customers and nonprofits, all of whom can access all of the platform’s features without a paywall. The plan is for those users’ access to effectively be subsidized by the app’s paying customers—banks and financial institutions—through licensing census tracts.
In the future, Moore hopes that CashMap will collect enough information to move from descriptive, diagnostic data to more predictive intelligence, which would in turn become another stream of revenue for the company.
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Startup: CashMap
Founder: Richard Moore
Founded: 2025
Team size: 3
Location: Thomasville, NC
Website: getcashmap.com
Funding: Bootstrapped; raising pre-seed
Moore said that over the course of the 14 months he’s spent developing Cash Map, he’s enjoyed becoming more involved in the state’s startup scene, as well as connecting with individuals and institutions across the Triad. Starting out by working with Appalachian State’s Transportation Insight Center for Entrepreneurship, CashMap has gone on to pitch at ConvergeSouth, complete a three-week course at the Nestbaum Center for Entrepreneurship and connect with the NC IDEA MICRO grant program.
As CashMap looks forward to its launch, Moore said that the company is looking to partner with nonprofits and community support systems specializing in financial literacy and education. Moore’s vision for Cash Map is one that imagines a more connected, informed community that promotes financial education in all stages without sacrificing privacy.
“The goal isn’t to collect more data,” Moore said. “It is to help make better decisions, help the banks and institutions and nonprofits make better decisions when it comes to community impact.”
