Detroit's Homegrown Fintech Is Coming For Your Bank

Detroit is not the first city that comes to mind when people talk about financial technology. A growing cluster of homegrown fintech firms is working to change that, building digital banking and lending tools aimed squarely at customers the traditional system has underserved.

A mission with a market

Detroit's fintech scene has a distinct flavor: many of its companies focus on the underbanked — people with thin credit files, gig incomes, or a deep distrust of traditional banks. It is both a social mission and, the founders argue, an underserved market that coastal fintechs overlooked.

"We're building for the customer the big banks priced out," said founder Malik Ferris, whose app offers small-dollar credit without the fee traps of payday lending. "That customer is our neighbor."

The trust hurdle

The hard part is trust. Convincing people burned by the financial system to route their money through a young app is slow work, built one word-of-mouth referral at a time. Growth has been steady rather than explosive — which may be the point. In a city that remembers financial institutions failing it, a fintech that grows carefully might be the only kind that lasts.