BaaS Specialist Moov Lands $5.5m Investment

The company offers tech infrastructure to banks and credit unions that need to upgrade or develop new systems.

In an announcement late on Tuesday (18 August), the company confirmed it had successfully raised the money in a seed funding round led by Bain Capital and supported by other venture firms Canapi, Commerce, Gradient, RRE, Uncorrelated and 27 high-profile angel investors.

“Seamless banking services have become a consumer expectation for technology companies in the same way the internet, cloud, and mobile have done in the past," said Wade Arnold, founder and chief executive officer of Moov.

“We see history being repeated in fintech where proprietary solutions were first to market and subsequently replaced by community-led efforts surrounding open source projects.”

The deal comes as Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) institutions continue to see substantial interest across the U.S. as traditional banking institutions look to improve infrastructure, enhance their speed to market with new products and improve operating margins.

Last month, Forbes reported how banks were embracing BaaS operations to improve regulatory compliance for international payments and enhance their technological capabilities.

Industry experts are tipping BaaS companies to be instrumental in changing the retail banking and payments landscape over the next five years.

In March, EY’s Global Banking & Capital Markets Sector Leader, Jan Bellens, warned banks that they must embrace new approaches to keep pace with developments.

“Nimble, modern and scalable architecture is needed to provide the ‘plug and play’ experience required as the move to open banking and the emergence of the Banking as a Service (BaaS) model drives further sector disruption,” he said.

In the latest announcement Moov said it had signed a strategic partnership agreement with Veridian, a credit union in Iowa with 35 branches. Veridian had already participated in the seed fundraising.

Also participating were some influential angel investors from the fintech world such as Zach Bruhnke, Charley Ma, Calanthia Mei and Emily White.

“Moov operates independently from traditional core banking systems, offering banks and credit unions the ability to collaborate and develop new fintech solutions,” explained Steven Hufford, senior managing director and chief operating officer of Raymond James Investment Banking.

“Rather than displacing branch systems, Moov-enabled institutions serve SaaS companies and fintechs with the latest technology protocols, benefiting all parties involved.”