Brendan McDermid/Reuters
- Robinhood will visit community colleges and HBCUs to encourage students to invest.
- The commission-free investing app will also give away $100,000 in tuition to students who sign up.
- The median age of Robinhood users is 31 and half of customers identify as first-time investors.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Robinhood is giving away $100,000 to get college kids to use the app.
The commission-free investing app announced a $20,000 tuition giveaway to five students who sign up for Robinhood using an ".edu" email address. The platform will give all students who sign up $15 to start investing.
Robinhood employees will visit historically black colleges and community colleges to talk to students about investing and other financial literacy topics.
"As a new year of college kicks off for 20 million students nationwide, we want to walk alongside them as they learn about financial markets and take that first step toward investing," the company stated in a release.
Robinhood users tend to be younger and more diverse compared to traditional investing services.
The median age of Robinhood users is 31 and half of customers identify as first-time investors, per The New York Times.
Nearly 4 million Robinhood users already identify as students who start investing with $25, the company said.
Robinhood's founders Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt said they created Robinhood to "democratize" finance by empowering more people to easily invest.
But some experts said Robinhood's platform can encourage risky investments through its video game-like product design.
Last year, 20-year-old University of Nebraska student Alex Kearns died by suicide after thinking he lost $730,000 on Robinhood. The young person's parents settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Robinhood in July.
"I'm sorry to the family of Mr. Kearns for your loss," Tenev said at a congressional hearing. "The passing of Mr. Kearns was deeply troubling to me and to the entire company."