Des Moines, IA (June 11, 2025) |
Curql, a collective of credit unions jointly investing in fintech, has launched Cohort 3 of Curql Accelerate—its national fintech accelerator created to align early-stage innovation with real credit union needs.
Out of hundreds of applicants, five standout fintech were selected for their potential to tackle some of the industry’s most pressing challenges—from fraud prevention to personalized member engagement, compliance, lending, and market intelligence. Over the next several months, these fintech will work directly with credit unions to refine their products, pressure-test assumptions, and build solutions with long-term relevance.
“These founders are here to listen, collaborate, learn, and grow alongside credit unions,” said Nick Evens, President & CEO of Curql Collective. “That’s where meaningful innovation begins.”
Meet the Cohort 3 fintech:
- Charm Security (Roy Zur): Offers an AI-powered scam defense platform to proactively protect credit unions and their members from scams, social engineering, and human-centric fraud; both in-app and in-person.
- Crux Analytics (Jacob Bennett): Provides a relationship intelligence platform for small business banking that helps credit unions identify, engage, and
monitor the most valuable relationships through workflow automation and real-time analytics.
- FinGoal (David Nohe): Analyzes behavioral patterns to help credit unions understand how members spend, save, and prioritize—fueling personalized engagement and ‘next best action’
- Reset (Matt Dicou): Enables credit unions to natively offer earned wage access (daily access to pay rather than normal payroll periods) that drives core deposits, increases card payment revenue and allows them to compete more directly with neobanks.
- Themis (Neepa Patel): A modern compliance collaboration platform built to streamline a credit union’s internal audits, risk assessments, and vendor management.
Through Curql Accelerate, each fintech will participate in on-site visits with credit union partners including Vantage West, Everwise, and Chartway. These working sessions go beyond surface-level feedback—they’re an opportunity for fintech founders to sit down with real teams, hear real friction points, and adapt in real time.
At Vantage West, Cohort 3 teams sat down with leaders to dig into the real-world issues credit unions are navigating right now—cybersecurity, CDFI impact, automation strategies, and the ongoing work of earning member trust. Execs shared transparent lessons from past fintech partnerships, emphasizing the importance of staying focused, building iteratively, and showing up as true collaborators.
That kind of candid, real-time feedback is exactly what Curql Accelerate is built around. Powered in partnership with gener8tor, a nationally ranked accelerator, the program helps early-stage fintech translate potential into practical solutions— shaped in lockstep with credit unions from the start.