OMAHA—A $10 million round will get D3 Banking another step closer to providing full online platforms for multiple mid-sized banks.
The Omaha financial tech company, established in 2011, has two beta customers, but CEO Mark Vipond said the $7 million investment from Virginia’s Route 66 Ventures and $3 million in follow-on funding from previous investors will give his company a chance to hire and grow to more banks.
The full terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the investments brings D3 Banking’s funding to a total of $16.1 million over the past few years.
Already at 35 employees, Vipond said he hopes to hire 20 more in product development, marketing and sales to expand its reach.
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Vipond hopes banks with around 100,000 or more digital customers will adopt the platform, which uses built in analytics to help banks give better advices and services to customers.
The platform provides traditional online banking services like money transfers and bill pay, but also built in budgeting, spend tracking and analytics on cash flow. The responsive design platform has a consistent experience from desktop to mobile to tablet, Vipond said.
Many banks are close to ditching their original online banking systems developed in the early 2000s for more advanced systems, Vipond said. And for the first time, banks are seeing branch traffic decline mainly because of the online and mobile experiences available, he said.
“What we’re building is a branch-like experience on mobile and desktop that still has all the advice and solutions of a branch without having to talk to a banker face to face,” Vipond said.
The right solution at the right time was part of the reason Route 66 Ventures funded the Midwest company.
“There’s not a lot of FinTech VC in this marketplace, but a number of VCs on the coasts have been tracking us for years,” Vipond said. “Route 66 saw that the the marketplace is ripe for this kind of disruption because so many banks are at the end of their replacement cycle for their online systems.
“We just have the right tools that are needed already developed for banks’ needs today.”
The company began as LoDo Software in 2011, but changed names to D3 Banking at the beginning of 2014. Vipond said the new name more closely reflects the new business. The company’s history is in data analytics.
In 2012, it started working with its first customer, Arvest Bank, a Fayetteville, Ark. bank. While D3 has launched internally, its 500,000 customers will migrate to the new platform in the new year. D3 is also working with an Iowa financial institution.
Next, D3 will work on products for small business, enterprise and high-dollar private wealth.
“Because we do analytics, we see this as a very useful tool for small business predicting cash flow.”
