Sharing financial accounts can not only be a precarious situation personally, but in terms of security.
Enter financial technology upstart Ivella. CEO and co-founder Kahlil Lalji of Ivella, launched a split account product that just raised $3.5 million in funding from Anthemis, Financial Venture Studio and Soma Capital. Other investors include Y Combinator, DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder and Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia.
Lalji, who helped creators with digital content before jumping into the world of fintech, says that the startup was “born out of his own frustration at the expectation that couples would just use Venmo if they were married.” With a shared card, couples can set ratios — maybe prorate what percent of each bill someone pays depending on their income — and Ivella will automatically split any transactions made using the Ivella debit card.
According to Lalji: “We have some real-time decision logic to determine what are the balances of these two user accounts? Can both users support their end of the payment based off of their default split? If so, move the money and then send back an approval.”
“The place that a lot of people fall short, just like a lot of FinTechs fall short, is that they don’t break the mold of what banking looks and feels like,” Lalji said. “And because we’re focused specifically on couples, we want to build a product that feels not so sterile and not just like a bank.”
