The Lever, June 10, 2024, How Your Life Savings Could Digitally Evaporate
In 2019, the fintech market was booming, with tens of billions of dollars of investment cash flowing to startups like Synapse. Many such companies touted their new vision for the future as one of financial inclusion — targeting communities distrustful of traditional banks, and advertising no-fee banking or payment services.
“A lot of these companies really present — in some way, shape, or form — their mission as financial empowerment,” said Jesse Van Tol, the president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an advocacy group focused on building wealth for low-income communities.
But that financial empowerment message can often be misleading, Van Tol added. “It really starts to look like what we call reverse redlining — the targeting of vulnerable communities for more expensive, sometimes abusive, products and services,” he said.
