4 Black Founders Working To Make The Financial System More Equitable To Underserved Communities

Dennis Cail started Dallas-based Zirtue, a fintech platform that helps people lend money to family or friends at 0 percent interest for terms of less than one year, or 5 percent for longer-term loans, in 2016.

The app “helps keep the lights on, the car running,” Cail says.

According to the Federal Reserve, in 2019 the typical White family in the U.S. had eight times the wealth of the typical Black family. “Less wealth means Black Americans are underrepresented in the market for financial products and services,” states a 2020 report from McKinsey.

Here are four more Black founders who aim to fix that.

Craig J. Lewis

Gig Wage gives you the tools to efficiently manage the process while alleviating payments related support. It will also streamline your workflow with customized payroll infrastructure. Contractors can self-onboard and self-manage their payment information through our easy-to-use contractor portal.

Payment optionality improves the contractor experience and will help you attract and retain the best talent while remaining competitive in the market.

The company now has almost 300 enterprise customers and has garnered more than $15 million in the capital, but things only got moving when Lewis swapped traditional venture firms for corporate ventures.

Wole Coaxum

Coaxum, a former J.P. Morgan executive, founded New York City-based Mobility Capital Finance (MoCaFi) in 2015 to help provide access to banking for underserved communities, in addition to other financial services. He was reportedly motivated by the protests of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

In 2020 – the company created new partnerships to reach customers, first with the city of Honolulu to distribute COVID relief funds and later with Los Angeles, Birmingham, and New Orleans. 

According to Inc – when people start using MoCaFi to receive payments from government programs–no social security number needed–they can also open a bank account, and access the platform’s other products, including rent reporting to credit bureaus to improve their credit scores, cashback rewards for shopping with local Black-owned businesses, and private coaching and documentation support for purchasing a home. 

Kelly Ifill

Kelly’s startup Guava helps Black-owned businesses bank and build community, and has plans to offer assistance with access to lower-barrier loans.

The average Black-owned startup has $500 in outside equity upon founding, compared with $18,500 for a typical White-owned business, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

But Guava has raised $500,000 to date, according to Inc and in mid-January completed an invite-only launch. Ifill hopes to have a couple of thousand users by the end of the year and be able to lend to small businesses on the platform by early 2023.