Plaid, a US-based financial technology provider, has set up FinRise, a nine-month incubator for early-stage fintech founders from underrepresented backgrounds.
The accelerator is looking at startups led by black, indigenous and people of colour. Black-owned firms were more than twice as likely to have unmet credit needs and were often subject to more scrutiny when applying for loans, according to the Small Business Administration.
FinRise’s partners for the accelerator include impact-focused venture capital firms Accion Venture Lab, Kapor Capital – the venture capital investment arm of the Kapor Center for Social Impact – the Pierre Omidyar-backed Flourish and Village Capital, Snapchat owner Snap and Amazon’s cloud provider, AWS.
Nell Malone, growth manager at Plaid, which saw its agreed $5.3bn acquisition by payment services firm Visa fall apart this month, and the company’s design manager, Bhargavi Kamakshivalli, are leading FinRise, according to TechCrunch.
