Neobank for Native Americans raises pre-seed funding
Summary
Other investors in the round include the Alloy Alchemist Fund, Debut Capital, Ruthless for Good and the Candide Group.The bank is focused on solving financial barriers to Native Americans "to change the status quo and create a new tradition of Native wealth-building," Amber Buker, founder and CEO of Totem, said in a press release. On the companys roadmap are features such as credit-building, charitable giving and Native-specific mortgages, such Section 184 loans from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.Buker also plans to white-label the app to individual tribes, which could feature that tribes colors and language and provide a way to distribute tribal benefits electronically. This will let Totem strike a balance between national coverage for people who do not live on a reservation but identify as Native, and for those who are closely tied to their tribes. "Connecting tribal members to their benefits could be a game changer in someones life," Jimmy Chen, founder and CEO of Propel, said in the release. Propel builds technology for low-income people to improve their financial health and was an angel investor in the round.