With the announcement of a new partnership deal, a Dallas fintech is launching a platform to “democratize banking” and bring more financial inclusion to consumers.

Emerging from stealth this quarter, Deposits.com, a platform that Co-founder and CEO Joseph Akintolayo describes as the “Shopify of banking,” is looking to add financial literacy and wellness tools to its technology. It plans to do that in a partnership with Utah-based MX, a financial data platform that raised $300 million at a $1.9 billion valuation in a 2021 funding round. The round was led by Fort Worth- and San Francisco-based private equity giant TPG Capital, on MX’s path to a future IPO.

“The concept is that banks are dinosaurs,” Akintolayo told Dallas Innovates. “We’re talking about a highly fractured industry that is ready to be disrupted.”

A ‘Shopify for banking’

The partnership deal will allow Deposits.com to offer “financial enrichment” tools to its community bank and credit union customers. Through Deposits.com, clients can quickly launch compliant financial products to their own customers, in an effort to help them compete with the technology and interface products offered by larger players in the industry.

“We’re Squarespace or Wix or Shopify for banking,” Akintolayo said. “If you have a community, we can help you launch compliant financial products very quickly. Small banks don’t have CTOs, they don’t have big tech teams, and tech budgets that they can use to revamp their stuff. So we created a platform that levels the playing field for everyone.”

From stealth to seed round

A member of the Fintech Equality Coalition and the African American Credit Union Coalition, Deposits.com is already gaining traction. Following a pilot launch in October, the company is seeing about $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue, which has allowed it to build out its 19-person team. And Akintolayo said the company expects to announce the closing of its seed round, of which he said about $5 million has already been committed, next month at SXSW.

Deposits.com isn’t the first fintech venture for Akintolayo. He previously formed and led Dallas payment and accounting automation startup swys, in addition to serving as the executive chairman of Africa-focused business formation company Renaissance Innovation Labs. Joining Akintolayo in Deposit.com’s C-suite is Chief Operating Officer Daniel Paramo, Chief Technology Officer Precious Dike, and Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Jimenez—all of whom were involved with the now-shuttered swys.

As the company looks to close on its funding round, Akintolayo said it will be looking to make new hires, especially in the area of sales, as well as partnering with more players in the community bank and credit union space.

“We’re a platform that democratizes banking and payments. We built our own fintech from the ground up. We built our own compliance stack from the ground up, our own cybersecurity from the ground up, and we got certified as a payment processor,” Akintolayo said. “We’re just like Stripe, all the different pieces that you have to assemble to really lower the barrier to entry, to lower the cost, and then provide a low-code and no-code system, so that people can have a common interface for interacting.”

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