Black-Owned Start-Ups Are Flipping the Fintech Script – Sponsor Content

Kelly Ifill was raised in an entrepreneurial Caribbean household in Brooklyn. Her grandmother ran a cleaning business, her uncle and cousins had a contracting company, and her aunt operated a landscaping enterprise. “You look at the tapestry of small businesses in America, and it almost mirrors the systems that my family has started. That’s the stock that I come from,” Ifill says. Like her family members, Ifill was determined to build something that she was passionate about, and that fulfilled the needs of fellow business owners.

In 2021, she launched Guava, a digital banking app for new entrepreneurs that allows them to access funding and connect to a community of fellow business owners. By assisting creators who have been shut out of traditional banking models, companies like Guava are slowly reshaping the field of financial technology, better known as fintech.

Over the past few years, fintech has rapidly become an undeniable part of our daily lives, from paperless payment apps like Venmo, Cash App, and PayPal to mobile banking apps, transit passes, and even ticket purchases for Broadway shows. It’s a lucrative industry, but in order for it to become an equitable one, people like Ifill—start-up founders from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds—need access to the funding necessary to scale and advance their businesses.

“We know that underrepresented founders received less than 2 percent of all venture capital globally last year,” says Sabrina Tharani, vice president, global startup and venture partnerships at Mastercard. “Black women founders, in particular, received even less.” In the first half of 2021, Black founders received $1.8 billion in funding, which represents just 1.2 percent of the $147 billion raised for all start-ups.

In 2021, Mastercard launched the Start Path In Solidarity program—an extension of its nearly decade-long start-up engagement program—to help boost those numbers. As part of the program, start-up founders from underrepresented backgrounds receive enterprise partnership readiness training, a dedicated mentor, as well as introductions to investors and Mastercard customers and partners. They also get the opportunity to collaborate with Mastercard on technology, apply for grants and investments, and pitch their solutions to prospects. Ifill and the two other founders featured below are inaugural members of the program, which is part of Mastercard’s $500 million In Solidarity commitment to help close the racial wealth and opportunity gap.

A majority of the Start Path cohort are not novices to entrepreneurship. Like Ifill, they filled out all the necessary applications, attended all the business classes they were advised to, and raised funds before reaching out to investors. But for many of them, the extra boost that Start Path provides—and the community of entrepreneurship it fosters—can be the critical ingredient that gets their businesses off the ground.

“Feeling seen might be a soft qualitative measure, but for entrepreneurs who are committed to their businesses, the acknowledgment of being seen, being understood, and being served is very powerful,” says Salah Goss, Mastercard’s senior vice president for social impact at the Center for Inclusive Growth.