Daylight CEO Rob Curtis. Image: Daylight
The US fintech start-up will be launching its services in October, which have been built for the needs of the LGBTQ+ community.
Daylight, a digital bank for the LGBTQ+ community, has raised $5m in seed funding.
Founded in 2020, Daylight is a banking and payments service that aims to improve financial equality for people in the community.
The US start-up was founded and is led by Rob Curtis, Billie Simmons and Paul Barnes Hoggett. It aims to address shortcomings in the existing banking structures for LGBTQ+ people, such as higher rates of debt and lower incomes due to discrimination, which can impact on financial planning.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Curtis said people in the community are less likely to have a savings account or invest in stocks when compared to other segments.
The funding round was led by Kapor Capital and Precursor Capital, with Anthemis Group, Clocktower, Financial Venture Studio and Citi also investing in the company.
Daylight provides users with a prepaid Visa card that’s issued through MetaBank and card issuing platform Marqeta. Like other neobanks, it gives users analytics and insights on their spending in a connected app. It also gives access to financial coaches that help users to better understand their spending and finances.
It is planning to build a business marketplace for companies to offer discounts and rewards.
The start-up’s service is currently in beta with a few thousand users already onboarded and a wait list open for interested users. It is targeting a full-fledged launch in the US in October.
Daylight is the latest fintech start-up to emerge that’s tackling a more specific and under-represented segment of the market, unlike the Revoluts and N26s of the world that aim to amass large user bases.
Killer Mike of Run The Jewels has co-founded Greenwood, a digital bank for people of colour that has raised $40m from several major banks including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.
