Orum, which seeks to reduce the time required to transfer money between banks and other institutions, today announced that it raised $56 million in Series B funding.The round was led by Accel and Canapi Ventures. It also had participation from existing backers Bain Capital Ventures and Inspired Capital. This financing comes just three months after Orum announced a $21 Million Series A and brings the total to $82 million.Stephany Kirkpatrick, Orum's CEO, launched the company in 2019. She had previously worked for many years at LearnVest (a personal finance website founded by Alexa Von Tobel) that was purchased by Northwestern Mutual in 2015. The purchase cost $375 million. Tobel then founded Inspired Capital, a venture capital company that invested in Orum's seed round of $5.2 million last August. The firm provided Orum with an inspirational check, which was the first money into his business.Kirkpatrick, a certified financial planner says she witnessed firsthand the deep cracks in the country's financial infrastructure. She believes that the fact that money can take days to move between banks is not only inconvenient but also unnecessary.Kirkpatrick stated that most Americans don't know much about ACH [automated clearinghouse] or the reasons it takes several business days to transfer money between accounts. Money cannot wait for 5-7 days before it reaches our accounts. It must be immediate.Orum's mission is simple, even though the technology behind it can be complex. Orum is a machine learning-backed API company that aims to transfer money intelligently across all payment rails and provide universal financial access.Orum's first embeddable product was Foresight. It launched in September 2020. It is an automated programming interface that allows financial institutions to move money in real-time. It uses machine learning and data science for predictive analytics and to identify potential risks. The Momentum product, which intelligently routes funds through payments rails, is powered by JPMorgan Chase Bank and Silicon Valley Bank.Kirkpatrick explained to TechCrunch that they power the backend of Momentum's Momentum platform, which allows money to move on a multirail basis. They provide real-time payment access.Orum claims it serves a variety of enterprise partners, including Alloy and HM Bradley, First Horizon Bank, Zero Financial, Avant, and Zero Financial.Kirkpatrick stated that Orum's volume of transactions is increasing by 100% each month. The majority of Orum's early growth was due to word-of-mouth.Remote-first company is proud of its diversity, both in terms of its employees and investors. Kirkpatrick reports that 48% of the 55 employees are women and 48% are non-white. Orum recently joined the Cap Table Coalition, a partnership of high-growth startups with emerging investors who want work to close the gap in racial wealth. The Cap Table Coalition will allocate over 10% to underrepresented founders. The financing also includes investors such the Neythri features Fund, which is a group made up of South Asian women who invest in the next generation and diversity of founders.Jeffrey Reitman (partner at Canapi Ventures), said that banks LPs are responsible for hundreds of millions of ACH transactions each year.He said that they need a way to get to a place where funds can be transferred immediately. The Orums product allows many financial service and fintech players to access faster money movement while not compromising their key risk principles.Reitman says that the company's key differentiators are its people, which he describes to be the best data scientists and engineers in this space.He said that many of their customers consider them to be crucial in helping to set the risk dials for how they fund transactions. This is done by mining key data from historical transaction data. Orum is also creating one of the most extensive and comprehensive data sets on the risks of money movements. A richer data set means better risk models. It will be difficult for other companies to match Orum's approach to building this data set.Sameer Gandhi, Accel Partner, agreed to join Orums board in the latest financing. Orum's 18-month-old period has seen the creation of game-changing technology as well as an extraordinary team, according to him.Orum said that he is working to tackle financial infrastructure since its foundation.
