Bankjoy building mobile banking app for use by credit unions

by Tech Crunch

by: Sarah Perez

Thanks to startups like Simple, which was acquired by financial services organization BBVA last year, banking customers got a look at what a modern-day web and mobile banking experience looks like, with features like goal-setting tools, automated categorization of expenditures, real-time notifications of new charges pushed to your mobile phone, the ability to block a lost or stolen card right from the mobile app, and more. Now, a new startup called Bankjoy wants to bring a similar experience to other, smaller banks with a white-labelled product and accompanying API platform that’s initially being aimed at credit unions.

The Y Combinator-backed startup was founded by Michael Duncan, who worked for years at a credit union himself, first as a programmer, then later promoted to manage the company’s online and mobile banking services.

While there, he realized that the architecture and developer tools the bank used could be improved, as well as the vendor relationships. For example, he tells us, the credit union didn’t know when its mobile banking service went down until one of its customers called in to report trouble.

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