A Synchronos vertical
Offered by your credit union or bank. Copies of the documents your family will need one day, sealed and kept off the internet, opened only with your key and theirs together.
Homedot is a digital safe deposit box. Not a drawer in a vault: a small sealed machine at the branch that holds copies of your will, deeds, policies and records, your family's list of real phone numbers, and a printed index of what is there and what is missing. Nothing in it is used to sell you anything.
No one can change what is in your box without it showing. Every opening is written to a record that cannot be edited.
For members, and the credit unions and banks that serve them · Pilots begin 2027
When someone is ill, or gone, or a house floods, a family usually spends weeks looking for documents. Homedot keeps sealed copies in one place, each with where it came from and the day it arrived.
The index shows what is there and what is missing. It does not say what to do about a gap; that is a conversation for your attorney or tax preparer. The box just makes sure you know.
An insurance policy renewing, a passport expiring, a will that has not been looked at in three years, a statement to read within the 60 days federal rules give you to report an unauthorized transfer.
Your list of real phone numbers, confirmed by you in person, printed for the wallet and the refrigerator door, with the callback rule on it.
Name someone you trust. A transfer above an amount you set, or to anyone new, waits until the credit union reaches that person at the number on file. They can confirm a transfer; they cannot see your balances or move your money.
Once a year, in person, the credit union confirms your list, your contacts and your index with you.
Before any money moves to a new account: hang up, and call a number on this card.
Confirmed in person · March 2027
Example card. Names and numbers are fictional.
A retired couple, a house paid off, thirty years at the same credit union. Here is what reached them in one week. None of it came from who it claimed to be.
Exhibit · one household, one week (illustrative)
| When | Who it said it was | What it asked |
|---|---|---|
| Mon 10:14 | Their grandson, crying, from a police station | $9,000 for bail, in cash, picked up by courier. "Please don't tell Mom." |
| Wed 15:40 | "The credit union's fraud department" | Move the savings to a "safe account" today, before the hackers do. |
| Fri 09:02 | A government agency | Back taxes owed, payable in gift cards to avoid arrest. |
The grandson's voice was built from his online videos. The "fraud department" had their real account number from an old data breach. Each call was designed to make them act before they could check.
The callback rule, as printed on the card
No money moves to a new or changed account until someone has hung up, called a number already on the family's list, and heard a person confirm it.
Not the number in the message, and not the number the caller gives. The one written down before today. A credit union will never ask you to move money to keep it safe, and no government agency takes gift cards.
The rule is free to anyone, with or without Homedot. What the box adds is the list the rule depends on, confirmed in person and kept current.
Most people's name, birth date and Social Security number have already been exposed in some breach. These five, all free, mean that knowing them is not enough to act as you. Homedot records whether each is in place, never the details themselves.
Free. It stops anyone opening credit in your name, and it can be lifted for a day when you need it.
Any taxpayer can request one. It stops someone filing a return in your name to take your refund.
A cloned voice can know your grandson's name and school. It cannot know the word the family chose at the kitchen table.
Old leaked passwords are still the commonest way into accounts.
And no bank or credit union login shared with an AI assistant, however helpful. The institution cannot tell it from you, and it may act on its own.
After a fire, a flood or an earthquake, families have to prove who they are, what they owned and what they were insured for, often with every paper they had gone with the house.
The walk-through video, the home inventory, the deeds and the policies are already sealed and dated, so a claim starts from records instead of memory. Insurers accept video as evidence of contents; most families have none after the fire.
Copies of identity documents help replace the originals, and the credit union has confirmed your identity in person before.
A second, offline copy is held outside your area, so a fire that reaches the house and the branch does not reach the record.
After a declared disaster, you can collect a sealed copy at any branch or shared branch, with your identity checked in person.
No. A safe deposit box holds originals and valuables in a vault. Homedot holds copies of papers, on a sealed machine. It never takes originals, cash or jewelry, and never stores a PIN, password or code word, only whether you have one.
No one, unless you are there with your key. Staff cannot open a box alone, and the machine cannot be reached from outside the branch.
The box is not on them. It is a separate machine with no connection to the credit union's systems or the internet. A breach elsewhere does not reach it.
Under state law, the person holding your key can present a death certificate and identification, and, with staff present, receive a copy of your will or trust and any burial instructions. Everything else waits for your executor or representative.
It is not a deposit, and share or deposit insurance does not apply to it. It holds copies; your originals are where you keep them.
No. Nothing in your box or index is used for marketing, and no products are offered during a Homedot visit. That is a rule the credit union signs, not a preference.
You take your sealed box with you, and the record of what was in it.
What Homedot will not do.
It will not move money, pay a bill, sign anything or call anyone. A hold on a transfer is placed by the credit union under its own rules, never by the machine.
It will not give legal, tax or investment advice. If the index shows a gap, it says so.
It will not stop a breach somewhere else. If a store, a hospital or an agency loses your information, it is lost; what Homedot can do is make sure your family's papers were never there.
Safe deposit boxes are disappearing: the largest banks are closing their vaults, and many credit unions never had one. Homedot is the version that fits a branch office, on a machine the institution owns outright.
One sealed machine, a scanner and a printer in a corner of an office, two keys, a rule book, and a routine four people can learn in a week. No connection to the core, no vendor network, no IT department.
A place for the papers, a printed index, reminders, a family card, and a reason to come into the branch for conversations an app cannot have.
A structure for the duty the law already places on them: the callback rule, the trusted contact and the second key give a teller something to lean on when a call or a visit looks wrong. Staff who report suspected exploitation in good faith are protected under the federal Senior Safe Act and state law.
A rule book cited to its sources, NCUA and state, and a log that shows who opened what, when and why, that cannot be edited after the fact.
No cross-selling and no marketing use of anything in a box. The service is offered under ordinary membership terms as records custody, not as a safe deposit box, so the vault's rules and liabilities do not attach.
A credit union that learns the routine at the branch already knows the machine its lending department could use next.
Intake, the two keys, the log and the seal, practiced on staff volunteers' own papers before any member's.
Chosen with the branch, many with an older parent and an adult child who wants to help. Each leaves with an index and a family card.
How many reminders mattered, how many second-key confirmations were asked for, what families found missing, and whether the log held. The numbers belong to the credit union.
Sealed packages for insurers and lenders, reading a scanned page to suggest its type and date for staff to confirm, and in time a smaller box at home.
Everyone building this has worked inside a bank or lent to the families it serves. It is built with a branch, not for one.
A small number of pilots beginning in 2027, one institution at a time. If you serve members and would like to talk, write.
eric@synchronos.com