All results
A Black dollar is a powerful tool. From the popularity of fashion items in culture to the work to overcome systemic barriers, the Black community works in various ways to build, accumulate, and maintain wealth. But in the words of Langston Hughes, “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” Black people have not always had the luxury or ease of access to the tools and resources necessary to build wealth. Because of the historical and present systems that impact the ability to build wealth, there is a lack of trust in traditional banking systems. This lack of confidence has caused many Black people to be considered “unbanked,” ultimately leading to a significant disparity in financial equity. The folks at Wells Fargo have taken particular notice of this disparity. As a part of its Banking Inclusion Initiative, the bank partnered with Black-led fintech startup MoCaFi to help alleviate the financial barriers for BIPOC community members. AfroTech had the opportunity to speak with the CEO...
Last year, Black-owned fintech company MoCaFi announced updates to their platform to better ease financial burdens for Black and brown communities. Today, they share news of closing a $12 million Series A funding round to expand into larger capacities. “In addition to offering high-quality, low-cost financial products and services that have helped many individuals and families across the nation, we are excited to launch a new strategy that allows municipalities to systematically address a significant market failure – the lack of access to banking products for large portions of the population,” said Wole Coaxum, Founder and CEO of MoCaFi, in a statement. “Communities of color are disproportionately impacted by this phenomenon. Our model reimagines how cities work with financial services to deliver banking and disbursement solutions to all their residents. Together we have the potential to play an important role in closing the racial wealth gap in the United States.” A press release...
Betting on himself took Newark, NJ, native Vaughn Crowe from initially wanting to be more involved in finance as a career to being a managing partner of a VC firm. During his time working at philanthropist Ray Chambers’ family office, Wesray Social Investments, Crowe was a founding limited partner in Newark Venture Partners (NVP) — founded by Audible’s Don Katz — on behalf of the family office. At AFROTECH™ Executive Newark, Crowe recalled investing in NVP as he had a desire to be an entrepreneur. “ When the opportunity presented itself to go and run a fund and run a firm that I had backed as an investor, it was a natural transition for me doing what I was doing inside of a single-family office to becoming a fiduciary of a number of different investors and having responsibility for catalyzing next-generation software businesses and backing extraordinary founders,” Crowe shared in an interview with AFROTECH™. NVP focuses on health tech, industrial, and fintech with plans to build “a...
Black-owned startup Meroxa just secured a Series A funding round to make operating way easier for businesses. TechCrunch is reporting that the data operations facilitator — which is owned by Chicago, IL native, and current Bay Area, CA resident, DeVaris Brown — successfully raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Drive Capital. Existing investors Root, Amplify and Hustle Fund also participated in this round, which together with the company’s previously undisclosed $4.2 million seed round now brings total funding in the company to $19.2 million. What Meroxa does is something that every company could possibly benefit from. By implementing the program into your company, you’ll be able to “feed” data to the system from different tools, and the program processes it all without expensive and confusing technology. “We aren’t a point-to-point solution,” Meroxa co-founder and CTO Ali Hamidi explained to TechCrunch. “When you set up the connection, you aren’t taking data from...
Africa’s fintech space has garnered more attention in recent years as more and more companies emerge on the continent to redefine proper banking solutions for consumers. Appzone — a fintech software provider that digitizes banks and financial services — was founded by Emeka Emetarom, Obi Emetarom, and Wale Onawunmi back in 2008 as a means to offer commercial banks custom software development services through homegrown financial technology versus tech of foreign origins, according to TechCrunch. Today, the Nigerian-based startup has announced the raise of a $10 million Series A investment round to build upon the success the platform has already seen and position itself as innovators of fintech in Africa. TechCabal reports the funding round was led by Lagos-based investment banking firm CardinalStone, with participation from other firms such as V8 Capital, Lateral Investment Partners, Constant Capital, and Itanna Capital Ventures. According to the outlet, Appzone plans to use the new...
The financial struggles and needs facing Black and brown Americans have significantly increased in the wake of COVID-19. Outside of health concerns, financial shocks have altered life and our economy as we know it. In an April survey conducted by the Pew Research Center , 73 percent of Black adults and 70 percent of Hispanic adults said they did not have emergency funds to cover three months of expenses. In turn, it made it even more difficult to pay their monthly bills. To help alleviate the financial burdens of Black and brown Americans, Black-owned fintech company MoCaFi has announced the launch of an upgraded banking platform with “features and services designed to address financial inequality in Black, Hispanic, and historically disenfranchised communities,” a press release said. View this post on Instagram A post shared by MoCaFi (@mocafiapp) MoCaFi — which stands for Mobility Capital Finance, Inc. — serves American residents who exist between the economic margins as either...