This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
Finovate Blog
Tracking fintech, banking & financial services innovations since 1994
South Korea-based Shinhan Bank recently wrapped up testing the use of stablecoins for cross-border transactions. The bank completed a proof-of-concept issuing and distributing stablecoins with an unnamed “megabank” outside of Korea. The two are leveraging the Hedera Network’s Hedera Token Service (HTS) and Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) to make the transfers.
Shinhan Bank will mint stablecoins backed by the South Korean Won (KRW), while the unnamed bank will mint stablecoins backed by its local currency. Under their partnership, customers can buy Shinhan’s KRW-based stablecoin and send them to an account at the other, unnamed bank. The recipient of the funds can then exchange the stablecoins for local currency.
Shinhan Bank opted to target international remittences because it is one of the sub-sectors with the most room for disruption. Cross-border transactions generally cost customers high intermediary bank costs, take three-to-seven days to complete, and don’t allow customers to track the funds while they are in progress.
“International remittances were a massive market of $702 billion in 2020, with $539 billion going to low- and middle-income countries,” said Hedera CEO and Co-founder Mance Harmon. “There is a massive opportunity to cut out the middleman and make this process dramatically more efficient and cost-effective, getting the most money possible to people who often need it urgently. We commend Shinhan and their partner for developing this solution, and are proud that it takes advantage of the economic and speed benefits that only the Hedera network can provide.”
This isn’t Shinhan Bank’s first time leveraging decentralized finance. In March, the bank partnered with LG CNS to create a platform for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The banks has also invested in Korea Digital Asset Custody (KDAC), a group of businesses that provide digital-asset custody services, and joined the Hedera Governing Council in April 2021.
An investment of $35 million will enable Solutions by Text (SBT), a compliant text messaging platform for consumer finance companies, to power broader adoption of its solution across the consumer finance lifecycle. The growth financing round was led by Edison Partners, and featured the participation of Stifel Venture Bank, a division of Stifel Bank.
In addition to the funding news, Solutions by Text also announced the appointment of former ACI Worldwide executive David Baxter as its new Chief Executive Officer
“Now more than ever, consumer finance organizations are taking a hard look at how to strengthen digital consumer relationships while maintaining compliance with national standards,” Baxter said. “Our opportunity to capture market share through existing and expanded platform capabilities is immense and we’ve assembled an exceptional team and board to turbo-charge this next chapter of growth.”
As part of the investment, co-founder Mike Cantrell and Edison Director Network members Ron Hynes and Nick Manolis will join the Solutions by Text board of directors.
Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and maintaining remote teams and offices throughout the U.S. as well as in Bangalore, India, Solutions by Text was founded in 2008. The company’s technology is used by more than 1,400 consumer finance companies – ranging from auto finance and lending to banking – who use SBT’s compliant texting solutions to support origination, servicing, and collection operations. Solutions by Text helps ensure that communication policies and practices are compliant with key regulations such as the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau’s Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), including a new Regulation F which went into effect today. The revision clarifies the ability of consumers to stop collection calls and/or text messages and is intended to respond to the rise of new communications methods.
Solutions by Text offers two-way texting to ensure seamless communication with customers, as well as a pay-by-text product, Text Pay, and a customizable URL shortening tool called SmartURL. SBT’s technology can be integrated via the company’s API, which enables access to the full range of the company’s text messaging tools including budgeting, reporting, file imports, message templates, and distribution lists.
“(SBT) is uniquely positioned to scale growth in the fintech market with a team of deep regulatory compliance, messaging, and payments expertise, not to mention a sizable loyal customer and partner base with significant embedded opportunity,” Edison Partners General Partner Kelly Ford said. “Eight in ten U.S. adults use text messaging on a regular basis,” Ford noted. “With Solutions by Text, financial institutions are meeting these consumers where and how they want to be met, and doing so with peace of mind.”
Payment card startup Slice received a $220 million Series B investment today, bringing its total funding to $291 million and boosting its valuation to over $1 billion, unicorn status. This is an impressive jump in valuation. According to TechCrunch, the India-based company was valued at under $200 million less than six months ago when it raised $20 million in funding in June of this year.
Today’s round was led by Tiger Global and Insight Partners and saw contributions from Sunley House Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, Anfa, Gunosy, Blume Ventures, and 8i. Slice plans to use the funds to expand its product line by launching a payment card for teens. The company is also working on adding support for the country’s real-time payment rails, unified payments interface (UPI), and a digital ID product.
Slice is aiming to disrupt India’s credit card industry by relying on its own underwriting system. The company, which targets millennials, has five million registered users and is currently issuing more than 200,000 cards every month, making it the third largest card issuer in India.
Because of its in-house underwriting, Slice doesn’t require a credit score; anyone over the age of 18 can apply. Credit limits are relatively low, starting at $26 (₹2k). Additionally, the fintech doesn’t charge a joining fee, or an annual fee. Cardholders can get up to 2% cashback on purchases and receive weekly deals from brands such as Amazon and Netflix.
Slice’s name comes from one of its most differentiating features. The company allows cardholders to “slice” all of their bills over the course of three months into multiple installments.
“Slice targets an underpenetrated market in India and seamlessly allows users to make online payments, pay bills and more,” said Insight Partners Managing Director Deven Parekh. “There is a large opportunity in the credit and payment space in India, and Slice is well-positioned to become the leader in the industry. We look forward to this partnership with slice as they continue to scale up and grow.”
In a round led by Nyca Partners, cloud native core banking technology platform Thought Machine has secured $200 million in new funding. The Series C investment gives the London-based fintech a valuation of more than $1 billion, giving the company so-called “unicorn status.”
Thought Machine will use the new capital to continue development and evolution of its flagship solution, Vault, and its Universal Product Engine. Vault leverages APIs and a microservice architecture to provide institutions with all of the functionality necessary to offer both retail and small business banking services. A system of smart contracts enables companies to configure Vault to support a variety of retail bank products including current and savings accounts, loans, credit cards, and mortgages. And as a cloud-based solution, Vault offers institutions security, flexibility, scalability, high availability, and an absence of friction.
Vault also enables institutions to better manage run and change costs so that banks only pay for the hardware they actually use and benefit from the ability to launch new products quickly and deploy upgrades to existing solutions with zero downtime.
“We set out to eradicate legacy technology from the industry and ensure that banks deployed on Vault can succeed and deliver on their ambitions,” Thought Machine founder and CEO Paul Taylor said. “These new funds will accelerate the delivery of Vault into banks around the world who wish to implement their future vision of financial services.”
Also participating in the Series C were new investors ING Ventures, JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments, and Standard Chartered Ventures. Existing investors Lloyds Banking Group, British Patient Capital, Eurazeo, SEB, Molten Ventures, Backed, and IQ Capital also contributed. Thought Machine has raised more than $348 million in equity funding to date.
Thought Machine demonstrated its core banking solution, Vault, in its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope in 2018. More recently, in September of this year, the company announced that JP Morgan Chase would replace its core banking suite with Thought Machine’s Vault. Also joining Chase in transitioning to Vault this fall was Arvest Bank, which operates a cohort of small, U.S.-based community banks. In April, Thought Machine announced an integration with fellow Finovate alum Wise (formerly Transferwise) to enable companies using Vault to access low-cost international fund transfers.
Founded in 2014, Thought Machine was named “B2B Fintech of the Year” by AltFiNews earlier this month.
Regardless of where you stand on the Revolut/Yoppie partnership “intention versus execution” debate, it is nevertheless remarkable how fintechs and financial institutions are reaching out beyond their traditional collaboration competencies to reach new markets and promote an ever-widening array of causes.
This week’s Finovate List Series looks at three ways that banks and fintechs are helping pave the way in terms of greater financial inclusion for underrepresented groups and deeper understanding of how everyday behaviors can have a significant impact on the environment.
Gender
The first digital banking platform in the U.S. dedicated to serving the LGBT+ community, Daylight, launched earlier this month. The platform is built to help LGBT+ financial services consumers to manage their finances and save for future expenses ranging from emergency funds to gender transition surgery and related medical expenses. The company notes that with an estimated 30 million people in the United States who identify as LGBT+, the community remains significantly underserved in financial services.
“This country is at a critical turning point where we have recognized companies and services have been performatively suporting the LGBT+ community versus serving its unique needs,” Daylight co-founder and CEO Rob Curtis told Retail Banker International earlier this month. “Despite our community’s combined $1 trillion in buying power, we are still ignored – roughly 20% of LGBT+ people are unbanked or underbanked.”
Daylight will offer Visa-branded cards in the customer’s preferred name, rather than the customer’s legal name, as well as financial tools to help prioritize spending decisions and meet financial goals. The platform will also provide expert financial advice and access to a network of financial management “coaches” that specialize in responding to the unique financial needs of those in the LGBT+ community. A member of Visa’s Fintech Fast Track program – and the program’s first LGBT+-based fintech – Daylight is also supported by card issuing platform and Finovate alum Marqeta.
Daylight has announced that it will begin operations in the middle of next month, starting with an invite-only, beta period involving “a few hundred people.” The company will focus first on markets in California and New York.
Ethnicity
In the wake of the George Floyd-inspired, Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, a spotlight has been shown on the rising number of financial institutions catering to African Americans.
Among the newer entries to this cohort is Adelphi Bank, which announced earlier this month that it has filed paperwork with the FDIC to become the first black-owned, depository institution in Ohio.
“We know that African Americans typically don’t have access to financial institutions to the degree that the majority community has,” former Fifth Third Central Ohio president and CEO Jordan Miller said to The Columbus Dispatch. “We know that our financial situations are not as strong in most cases. And so we want to make a difference in the community across Franklin County, to give those underserved a voice and financial services,” Miller, one of Adelphi Bank’s proposed incorporators, added.
The bank would be located in the King-Lincoln/Bronzeville neighborhood, and its backers stated that they plan to raise $20 million in equity capital upon earning FDIC approval to open. The institution takes its name from the city’s first black-owned bank, Adelphi Loan & Savings Company, which was launched in the early 1920s. The new bank will be part of a $25 million development called Adelphi Quarter, which will feature both housing and ground-floor businesses. The Columbus Dispatch reported that the original facade of Adelphi Loan & Savings has been incorporated into the new structure.
Sustainability
This week we reported on the partnership between Tink and ecolytiq to give banks, financial institutions, and fintechs the ability to offer environmental impact data to their customers. These kind of solutions, which include options like carbon footprint calculators, have been among the chief ways that many innovative companies have sought to bring their sustainability technology to the world of financial services.
Today we learn that micro-investing platform Wombat has added a new option to its impact investment offerings: a sustainable food ETF (exchange-traded fund) that enables investors to get exposure to dozens of companies that are involved in developing sustainable food production systems and products. These companies include new, but well-known brands such as plant-based food company Beyond Meat, oatmilk company Oatly, and farm-to-table business Tattooed Chef.
The fund, called The Future of Food, is the fifth impact investment offering on Wombat’s platform. The ETF was created via a partnership between thematic ETF issuer Rize and thematic research company Tematica Research. It will trade on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker “FOOD LN.”
“At Wombat we have found that some of our most popular thematic funds are those that offer impact investment opportunities, such as our Medical Cannabis and Green Machine ETFs,” Wombat co-founder and CEO Kane Harrison said. “We think this new sustainable food fund is a great addition to that range and it means we now offer a very competitive choice of impact investments when compared with other micro-investing platforms.”
Founded in 2019, Wombat currently has more than 190,000 users.
Column Tax, a company that offers tax features as a service, unveiled a new tax product today along with its announcement that it raised $5.1 million in seed funding.
The investment, which marks Column Tax’s first funding round, was led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from South Park Commons, Core Innovation Capital, and Operator Partners. The company will use the money to expand client adoption of Tax Filing, an income tax filing API, and Tax Refund Unlock, the tool it is launching today.
Tax Refund Unlock is a product that allows banks and fintechs to offer their users advance access to their tax refunds in monthly payments. Column Tax CEO Gavin Nachbar explained that the new product will help Americans to access their refunds year-round, so that they can “save, invest, pay off debt, and meet ongoing obligations throughout the year, all with greater peace of mind.”
Column Tax is launching the new offering in partnership with Atomic FI, a fintech that offers APIs to drive consumer engagement; and Klover, a fintech that offers free cash advances and financial tools in exchange for customers’ data. With the Klover app, users can unlock access to their future tax refunds.
“Americans should be able to access their money when they need to. Increasing your paycheck by a couple hundred dollars can be life changing for millions of people,” said Klover CEO Brian Mandelbaum. “At Klover, we want to level the playing field by helping consumers get access to fair financial services. We already offer free access to your paycheck, real-time price comparisons, money management and saving tools, and a lot more. This is the next logical step in doing right by our consumers.”
Column Tax is headquartered in California and was founded by Gavin Nachbar, Michael R. Bock, and Shehan Chandrasekera.
A new partnership between North Dakota-based Cornerstone Bank and Buy Now Pay Later company Credova is the latest example of how bank-BNPL partnerships are becoming increasingly common in financial services. Per the agreement, Cornerstone Bank will do business as Noka and will provide loan origination for Credova, which specializes in BNPL solutions for the outdoor recreation, farm, home, and ranch markets.
“This is the next step in our company evolution, to partner with Cornerstone Bank, a pillar in the banking community,” Credova CEO Dusty Wunderlich said. “It’s not often you find a bank with a nearly 100-year history be so nimble and forward thinking, but that’s exactly what we’ve discovered in Cornerstone Bank.”
One of the ten largest financial institutions in North Dakota, Cornerstone Holding Company, the parent company of Cornerstone Bank, is a $1 billion financial institution with 11 locations in North and South Dakota. Headquartered in Fargo, Cornerstone offers its customers access to business and personal loans, deposits and cash management services, and both online and mobile banking.
“This exclusive agreement furthers our vision of being who people turn to when they are making important decisions about their money,” Cornerstone Bank chairman Gary Petersen said. “Cornerstone Bank and Credova share very similar cultures and approaches to doing business, making this relationship a great pairing. Both organizations will benefit from each other’s areas of expertise.”
Founded in 2018, Credova recently relocated its headquarters from Nevada to Bozeman, Montana. The move, according to Wunderlich, reflected a desire to base operations in “a location that echoed our values and allowed us to continue to lead an outdoor lifestyle.” The POS financing platform offers a virtual card and extended installment financing along with its “Pay in 4” BNPL program that will allow consumers to divide their purchases into four, zero-interest payments. Available as either an on-site or an in-store integration, Credova’s financing platform has enabled merchants to realize a more than 3x increase in AOV (average order value) compared to other payment methods, a more than 51% increase in overall sales volume, and a more than 72% increase in conversion rates. Credova includes 3H Tactical, Big Tex Outdoors, Broadheads and Bullets, and Cedar Pet Supply among its most recent brand partners.
Sustainability-as-a-Service company ecolytiq has announced a partnership with Visa-owned, European open banking platform Tink that will bring personalized impact footprint calculations and other pro-sustainability solutions to banks, financial institutions, and fintechs. The technology, which helps encourage customers to shift their behavior toward more sustainable choices in terms of spending, will be available initially in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) and eventually expanded to other, larger markets in Europe.
“ecolytiq’s solution was created with the ability to quickly scale, because we know that global warming needs exponential climate action enablers,” ecolytiq CEO and co-founder Ulrich Pietsch said. “Tink is a strategic partner with a proven track record for enabling banks and fintechs to deliver the data-driven digital solutions their customers want and need. ecolytiq is the next-generation of these products.”
Ecolytiq’s products include ecoAware, which uses country-specific calculations to determine a customer’s personal environmental impact based on their bank transactions; ecoEngage, which helps bank customers determine ways to reduce their environmental impact via feedback loops, footprint analytics, and peer group comparisons; and ecoAction, which enables bank customers to offset their environmental impact via donations to ecolytiq’s certified offsetting partners. ecoAction allows individuals to compensate 100% or more of their carbon footprint, and ecolytiq plans to soon add ESG investment funds as a donation destination as well as the ability to select a green energy provider with its ecoSwitch solution.
An alum of Finovate’s developers conference, ecolytiq demonstrated its technology at FinDEVr 2021 earlier this year. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Berlin, Germany, ecolytiq has already forged partnerships with Visa, FinTecSystems, challenger bank Tomorrow, and Worldline. Over the summer, the company won recognition in the Impact Shakers Awards in the “Education” category.
Two-time Best of Show winner Tink, based in Stockholm, Sweden, most recently demonstrated its technology on the Finovate stage at our European conference in 2019. The company’s open banking platform handles more than one billion API calls a month; supports more than 3,400 bank and financial institution integration partners; and reaches more than 250 million bank customers across Europe. Tink’s products help institutions confirm account ownership and verify income; provide up-to-date, standardized and categorized transaction data; offer a fully embedded payments experience to boost engagement and conversion, and enable firms to build smart, intuitive personal finance management solutions. In addition to its partnership with ecolytiq, Tink has also recently embarked upon collaborations with French payments service provider Lemonway and German PFM app Placons.
“The combination of Tink’s transactions product and ecolytiq’s sustainability expertise creates a valuable proposition for financial institutions and fintechs across the DACH region to offer services that better measure and help reduce carbon footprint,” Tink Regional Director for the DACH region Cyrosch Kalateh said. “We look forward to extending this partnership in the future, helping ecolytiq to expand at speed across Europe on our open banking platform.”
While some European fintechs are exiting the U.S. market, consumer payment services firm Klarna is doubling down. The Sweden-based company announced it is adding its Pay Now option to its U.S. payment services.
The Pay Now tool does exactly what it implies. Instead of using Klarna’s signature buy now, pay later (BNPL) payment structure, it allows users to pay immediately and in full at retailers where Klarna is accepted. This move offers U.S. shoppers more options when paying with Klarna at the point of sale. Users can now pay in full using Pay Now or pay over time with Pay in 4 and Pay in 30 solutions which allow users to split a purchase into four interest-free payments or pay over the course of 30 days, respectively.
“Consumers continue to reject double digit interest rates and fee-laden revolving credit, while simultaneously seeking more choice, control and flexibility in how they shop and pay both online and in store,” said Klarna Co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski. “With the introduction of ‘Pay Now’, Klarna now offers U.S. consumers the choice to pay immediately and in full, alongside our sustainable interest-free services.”
As a result of adding the Pay Now option, U.S. retailers can now offer Klarna users a more well-rounded payment experience. By offering the option to pay in installments or pay immediately, consumers will be more likely to choose Klarna as a payment option regardless of whether or not they want to use a BNPL tool or pay in full immediately.
Klarna also announced it will launch its physical debit card to the U.S. market. The company wasn’t specific about timing but said it plans to introduce the new product “very soon.” Klarna refers to its debit card as a “tangible extension of the Klarna app experience” because it allows users to pay for their purchases over time and connects to the Klarna app to help users track their purchases. The card is also integrated with Klarna’s loyalty program, Vibe, which offers users rewards, deals, and discounts.
The past year has been quite an active one for BNPL companies. Klarna almost doubled its U.S. customer base this year, now reaching 21 million customers. “By launching ‘Pay Now’ and introducing the Klarna Card in the US, we are continually developing our services to meet consumers’ changing needs,” added Siemiatkowski.
Across the globe, the company counts 90 million active customers in 19 countries who make two million transactions per day at Klarna’s 250,000 merchants, including big brands such as H&M, IKEA, Expedia Group, Samsung, ASOS, Peloton, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Nike. Since it was founded in 2005, Klarna has raised $3.7 billion. The company now has a valuation of $45.6 billion and 4,000 employees.
“Open banking empowers consumers and small businesses to use their financial data to expand access to financial services, such as demonstrating their financial wellness to increase access to credit, aggregating financial data to improve personal financial management, and to more seamlessly set up and manage payments,” Mastercard Chief Product Officer Craig Vosburg explained. “Together, we’ll continue to build up on our API connectivity and our multi-rail strategy to enable greater consumer access, control, and choice around the world.”
Aiia is the company known formerly as Nordic API Gateway, the leading open banking platform in Northern Europe. More than 40 financial institutions, as well as a number of enterprises, rely on the platform to integrate financial data and offer A2A (account-to-account) payments. Via a simple API, the solution supports a wide variety of payment services ranging from one-off, e-commerce payments to bulk payments for SMEs. The company demonstrated the technology at its Finovate debut at FinovateEurope earlier this year.
Founded in 2017, Aiia includes Danske Bank, OP Bank, Lunar, DNB, and Santander Consumer Bank among its partners. A licensed Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISP) and Account Information Service Provider (AISP), Aiia has raised more than $15 million (€13.5 million) in funding to date. This includes a $5 million investment from DNB and Danske Bank in April of last year.
“For the past decade, we have worked to build Aiia into a leading and quality-driven open banking platform, which has onboarded hundreds of banks and fintechs onto safe and secure open banking rails,” Aiia founder and CEO Rune Mai said when the acquisition news first broke in September. “We have worked closely alongside banks, customers, and local authorities to ensure that our APIs show the true effect of open banking. We’re excited to become a part of Mastercard and progress our journey of empowering people to bring their financial data and accounts into play – safely and transparently.”
Aiia is the latest fintech acquisition by Mastercard. The purchase comes a year after the completion of its acquisition of real-time financial data and insights company Finicity.
Ohio-based KeyBank made its sixth acquisition today. The bank purchased Banking-as-a-Service company XUP, a platform that helps banks take control of the merchant experience. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2018, XUP connects merchants, third party financial service providers, and acquirers across channels to help banks offer a more integrated and seamless payments experience. KeyBank will use XUP’s technology to improve its embedded banking strategy and improve the user experience for its commercial users. The bank describes the move as the “next step in providing digital innovation at scale.”
Today’s news is only the latest development in the relationship between KeyBank and XUP. The bank contributed to XUP’s $3 million Seed round closed in February and the two were strategic partners. According to KeyBank, XUP helped accelerate the volume growth of its merchant payments capabilities. The bank now counts 150 million card transactions each year, accounting for $13.6 billion in annual card volume.
“We’ve long embraced the software innovation that’s sweeping through the financial services industry, and the acquisition of XUP allows us to continue to be a leader in this space,” said KeyBank’s Head of Enterprise Payments & Analytics Ken Gavrity. “XUP’s highly experienced team has accelerated us on the journey to build connectivity across our systems, our partners, and our customers, to make it easy to do business with Key.”
XUP will continue to operate as its own entity and support its customer base. “Our end-to-end software solutions, combined with Key’s scale and deep financial services expertise, will perfectly blend to provide clients a best-in-class payment experience,” said XUP President Chris May.
KeyBank was founded in 1825, has $187 billion in assets under management, is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, and has 1,000 branches across the U.S. The bank’s other acquisitions include AQN Strategies, Finovate alum HelloWallet, First Niagara Financial Group, EverTrust Financial Group, and Leasetec. Among the company’s strategic partners are AvidXchange, BillTrust, and Bill.com.
EarlyBird, a mobile investing app for children and their families, has raised $4 million in seed funding today. Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six led the round, which featured strategic participation from Gemini’s Frontier Fund, Network Ventures, Rarebreed Ventures, and other angel and VC investors. The company will use the capital to continue building its solution, add to its engineering, product, marketing, and operations teams, and introduce new features – including the ability for users to invest and gift assets other than stocks and ETFs, such as cryptocurrencies.
The investment takes the company’s total funding to more than $7 million, having secured funding previously in November and January of last year.
Using a collaborative approach to next-generation wealth building, EarlyBird enables parents to set up an investment account, select from a number of diversified portfolio options, and begin making investments on behalf of their child. The platform also empowers members of a child’s extended network of family, friends, and others to contribute to the account (“gifted capital” EarlyBird calls it). Whether celebrating birthdays, holidays, or other occasions, these contributions are not only unique gift options, they also help young people begin to learn about the importance of investing and building wealth over time. The technology also has a feature that enables contributors to add a video or photo commemorating the gift.
“EarlyBird started with the vision to create an accessible way for all families to begin building wealth for their children, and to do so with the support, love, and contributions of their broader communities,” EarlyBird co-founder and CEO Jordan Wexler said. “Since our launch, we’ve seen incredible growth, adoption, and excitement from families with a wide range of financial knowledge and backgrounds. Seven Seven Six and all of our new partners recognize the importance of financial access and approachability in investing, and we’re thrilled to have them on board as we continue to take flight.”
Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and founded in 2019, EarlyBird recently announced a partnership with Benjamin Talks, a youth-oriented financial education platform launched by co-founders Nikki Boulukos and Carissa Jordan last fall. The collaboration will bring Benjamin Talks content to EarlyBird’s newsletter series “The Weekend Worm” which offers stock market news in an approachable way that parents can share with their children. This spring, EarlyBird introduced its Gifts for Good program. Starting this April, EarlyBird selected up to three “extraordinary kids between the ages of 3 and 12 years old to support and invest in.” With an eye toward young people showing achievement in areas such as music and the arts, athletics, academics, and “special acts of kindness,” EarlyBird will provide a gift investment of $250 to each child selected to seed their investment accounts.
“Investing tools are only available to families with investing knowledge and experience building generational wealth,” EarlyBird COO Caleb Frankel said in a statement accompanying today’s investment news. “We have a bold vision to make investing available for everybody. We are driving wealth creation not within the system of today, but for the world of tomorrow.”
