Backed by Tiger Global, Mayfair emerges from stealth to offer businesses a higher yield on their cash
Summary
The money is actually moved by Stripe via its technology into an account at Evolve, with Stripe holding the ledger.Weve tied all that together, said Mayfair co-founder and COO Munish Chopra.Chopra and Daniel Chan had worked at private equity hedge funds for most of their careers and grew frustrated by not being able to put any of their own money to work for decent yields, with the average savings account for businesses paying 0.3% in interest.And we didnt want to take any risks with our money either, said Chopra, who previously worked as managing director of Triton Partners.The pair teamed up with serial entrepreneurs Kent Mori and Kevin Chan in February 2021 to start a company, exploring different business models before settling on Mayfairs current offering.Beyond providing access to higher interest rates, Mayfair says its software gives businesses a way to choose how much they need for operations and earn yield on the rest via automated cash management.On a daily basis, well rebalance your accounts to make sure that if youve got say, more than half a million in your operating account, well move that into the cash account so that it can earn maximum yield, Chopra said. Tiger Global, led by John Curtius (who has since departed the firm), led the companys seed raise with Amity and BoxGroup also participating.As we were going around and trying to figure out what our options were, it turned out that if we pushed hard enough and negotiated hard enough, we could get far better [interest] rates, and we could develop far better partnerships, Chopra told TechCrunch in an interview. So as we were doing that, it became obvious to us that actually we were supposed to start a company that makes that rate available to others, whether theyre startups, or more successful companiesThats obviously a very sensible thing for people to do with cash, especially now when theres trouble with inflation and everyones downsizing and needs to do something with their cash.Mayfair went live with its offering in late 2022, and is emerging from stealth with dozens of customers, including freight logistics startup Factored Quality, on its platform.Some of them have very small balances, like tens of thousands of dollars, Chopra said. The company believes that it can attract banks as partners by pledging to deliver a higher amount of deposits than they would get on their own.They dont have to pay to have a marketing force or for distribution, Chopra said. Meanwhile Dan Chan founded JANDI, which is dubbed the Slack of Asia.Ive known the team for many years before investing and was drawn to their ability to execute and the speed at which theyve been able to ship quality products that are being used at scale.