- Greenwood, a digital banking platform catering to black and Latino communities, raised $45 million in new funding this week.
- The funding round was led by Pendulum, an investing and advisory platform for founders of color.
- Atlanta, Georgia-based Greenwood was named after the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was known as “Black Wall Street” in the early 20th century due to its high concentration of black-owned businesses.
In a round led by Pendulum, a strategic growth investing and advisory platform for founders of color, digital banking platform Greenwood has secured $45 million in new funding. A digital banking platform designed to meet the needs of members of the African-American and Latino/Hispanic communities, Greenwood will use the funding to advance its goal of closing the wealth gap between ethnic minority and majority populations and enable African-Americans and Latinos to more readily build generational wealth.
“Our vision is to make Greenwood the premier destination for black and Latino wealth creation and regeneration while keeping community connection and collective professional advancement at the center,” Greenwood chairman and co-founder Ryan Glover said.
Joining Pendulum in this week’s funding were a host of new investors including Cercano Management, Cohen Circle, The George Kaiser Family Foundation, and NextEra Energy. Existing investors Bank of America, Citi Ventures, PNC, Popular, Truist Ventures, TTV Capital, and Wells Fargo also contributed.
Greenwood also announced the launch of a new offering that takes advantage of its recent acquisitions of The Gathering Spot and Valence, a pair of African-American owned private membership networks for black professionals, entrepreneurs, and corporations. The offering, called Elevate, gives its members access to The Gathering Spot’s private membership network – including the organization’s physical clubhouses in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. – as well as Valence’s professional networking platform and recruiting database. The launch of Elevate is geared toward helping Greenwood fulfill both the community building and career advancement components of its mission.
“Greenwood is poised to create new outcomes and equip our communities with the resources they have been systematically excluded from in the pursuit of economic opportunity,” Pendulum CEO and co-founder Robbie Robinson said.
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Greenwood has more than 100,000 customers on its platform, and more than one million individuals in its combined community including The Gathering Spot and Valence. The fintech offers a digital bank account with no hidden or overdraft fees, a Mastercard debit card, support for P2P transfers, two-day early wage access, and a global ATM network. Greenwood also provides opportunities for its customers to help communities in need via programs like Feed a Family (in partnership with Goodr), donations to non-profits such as the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) and NAACP from customer spare change round-ups, and monthly small business grants of $10,000 to African-American or Latino/Hispanic owned businesses. The platform also offers financial education and information designed for black and Latino audiences via its Greenwood Studios operation. Greenwood’s banking services are provided courtesy of a partnership with Coastal Community Bank.
The name of the digital banking platform was inspired by the Greenwood District, a historic African-American community in Tulsa, Oklahoma that, in the early 20th century, featured one of the greatest concentrations of black businesses in the U.S. Known as “Black Wall Street”, the community was the site of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 in which a mob of white Tulsans destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the Greenwood District. The attack was described as the “single worst incident of racial violence in American history.” Hundreds were hospitalized and estimates of the number of Oklahomans killed ranged from 75 to 300.