Oxygen Series Runa Capitalwheatleysiliconangle – Oxygen, a digital banking startup that focuses on helping freelancers and others with multiple revenue streams, raises $17M Series A led by Runa Capital.
“We wanted to build something that didn’t exist,” said CEO Adam Saltsman. “Most banks just want you to deposit money or take out a loan.” He acknowledged the recent progress being in mobile and alternative banking but said, “Most people still need a physical bank branch. We’re tackling the biggest problem in this industry, which are these customers that don’t fit.”
Oxygen is building a mobile app and backend platform that will allow its users to track revenue streams, including freelance income and multiple revenue streams from various apps. The idea is to provide a comprehensive overview of your banking activity from all income sources in one place.
“This is so hard for many people,” Saltsman said. “You have all these different income sources and no way to put them together. We’re building a platform that can tie together all of this information.”
Oxygen is aiming to launch in the third quarter of 2016, with a full product release in 2017. But he noted that this is fintech, so “we should be able to move faster than that.” The company currently has six employees with plans to double or triple over the next six months.
Some of Oxygen’s customers are freelancers and people who run multiple apps through partners.
Oxygen is trying to provide a solution to a very unique problem – the banking needs of what Saltsman called “digital nomads.” He noted that people like himself who were able to drive from one city to another because of their professional pursuits were accustomed to handling their own finances from day-to-day. But when they left behind their full-time jobs, they became unbanked.
Saltsman said that Oxygen is aimed at people who are also freelancers and have multiple revenue streams from different apps. The target audience includes people with multiple apps that offer freelance services or other income. In addition to the challenges of paying taxes on multiple income streams, consumers can face a challenge in reconciling bank statements for individual accounts – let alone all the apps they use.
Some banks hide this information; for example, some (by design) ignore the income from a particular app or service. Others only provide separate summary pages that don’t reveal the whole picture, and Oxygen is trying to provide a solution to those challenges.
Saltsman said that using multiple apps will be one of Oxygen’s most powerful features. “When you have all your revenue sources together in one place, it’s a very powerful thing,” he said. “We have a bunch of customers using many different apps for different purposes and it will be easy to consolidate them.”
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Oxygen is looking to create an ecosystem that involves partners of all types, from banks to individual app developers. The main goal is the development of a platform where all the users’ earnings from various apps can be seen in one place.
Obviously, Oxygen’s mobile app will have its own native payments feature; Saltsman said that whatever payment methods are customer favorites will be included.