Artist News

Killer Mike co-founds a new US bank targeting black and Latinx entrepreneurs and business owners

By | Published on Monday 12 October 2020

Killer Mike

Entrepreneurial music-makers have got themselves involved in lots of non-musical business ventures over the years, especially within the hip hop community. Though Killer Mike might be the first to set up a bank.

The activist and Run The Jewels rapper has teamed up with a former mayor of Atlanta, Andrew Young, and the founder of US television network Bounce TV, Ryan Glover, to launch Greenwood, a digital banking platform that will target black and Latinx customers – both individuals and businesses – in the US.

The start-up announced that it had secured $3 million in seed funding last week as it put its initial website live. Although the banking service won’t actually properly launch until the new year, Glover said this weekend that tens of thousands of people have already signed up to open an account.

Glover has been working on launching Greenwood since early 2019, though he says interest in the venture has risen in recent months amid the latest round of Black Lives Matter protests. One of the many things that those protests have sparked is a movement to support black entrepreneurs and businesses owned by black people. Providing support to those entrepreneurs and businesses is a key aim of the Greenwood venture.

Confirming his involvement in the new banking platform, Killer Mike last week cited a frequently shared stat regarding how money that flows into the black community in America is quickly spent with businesses outside that community.

“Today, a dollar circulates for 20 days in the white community but only six hours in the black community”, the rapper said. “Moreover, a black person is twice as likely as a white person to be denied a mortgage. This lack of fairness in the financial system is why we created Greenwood”.



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