Current Has Closed over $3.6 million Seed Round to Continue Our Transformation of the Banking and Payments Industry
After 16 years working in the world’s financial hubs for some of banking’s biggest firms, I walked away knowing two things: 1) The reality of how “money” truly works; and 2) How that model simply doesn’t come close to meeting most people’s banking and payment needs today.
Why is that? Incumbent institutions long ago grew too large to serve the local communities they once served as embedded members of these communities. They also have yet to learn how to efficiently leverage software to reconnect with their customers. They saw depositors, not users.
I began to wonder what a new kind of financial services company would look like — one built from the ground up for the connected world. A few years later, that vision has become a reality in the form of Current, where our team has spent the last two years building a highly secure, transparent payment platform and commerce ecosystem built around financial collaboration. This platform will enable us to go beyond just banking and payments. We want to address very real economic and community-oriented challenges — problems that have been left unsolved by the incumbent banking sector that lacks the progressive tools to help people manage their everyday lives.
Today we mark an important step in our evolution: I am pleased to announce that we have closed over $3.6 million in seed funding.
The round was led by a group of visionary entrepreneurs and funding organizations, including our original backers — Expa and Human Ventures — as well as Future Perfect Ventures and other marquee investors.
This funding will allow Current to continue building a banking and payments platform of the future — one that can be easily accessed through mobile, tablet and desktop devices, and in line with today’s digital-first consumers for an industry in desperate need of progress.
The Current platform will leverage world-class fraud prevention and encryption systems to safeguard users’ financial information and assets. Current’s toolset also will enable our customers to connect their bank accounts to their preferred social media platforms, such as Kik, Facebook Messenger and iMessage, to conduct payment transactions.
Giving back is also an important tenet at Current, to help fill the void that traditional banks left behind in shedding the community presence that had underpinned their local growth strategies. . Our suite of tools will enable users around the country to use Current alongside their local and community banks — once centers of mid-sized to smaller cities across America. More functionally, these tools will provide consumers the means to track transactions in real time, encourage fiscal responsibility and support charitable causes.
Later this month, we’ll be releasing a solution that provides collaborative and safe money management solutions for families. The team is hard at work putting the final touches on it, and we can’t wait to show it off.
At Current, we’re building an API for money and commerce. Constructed on collaboration, we are allowing consumers of all ages, types and demographics to safely pay for things digitally, set budgets and learn about financial responsibility.
Today is just one step along the path to delivering financial solutions that people deserve.
Stuart Sopp
CEO
Current
