Greenwood, the Atlanta-based digital banking platform geared toward Black and Latino people, has launched a new investment platform.
Greenwood Invest will be available to members who pay for a premium membership ($10/month) or the Elevate membership ($200/month, and gives customers access to the other companies in Greenwood’s portfolio as well as travel and event perks).
Since its founding in 2020, Greenwood has provided debit and savings products for its 100,000-plus accountholders. Investment is a new frontier that Ryan Glover, CEO and co-founder of Greenwood, hopes will bring the company closer to its stated mission of closing the racial wealth gap.
“We as a community helped build this country and we should own a part of it,” Glover said. “And ... investing in companies that have proven to be a staple in American culture … from Coke to Microsoft and OpenAI, helps us reach that goal as a community.”
Greenwood Invest lives within the company’s mobile application and is being powered by DriveWealth, a third-party brokerage platform. Members can buy stocks in companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ or in exchange-traded funds, according to Glover. Users will be able to see companies’ stock performance over the past week and other business metrics before making a trade.
Greenwood — whose founders also include tech entrepreneur Paul Judge, rapper Michael “Killer Mike” Render and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young — is preparing to roll out new educational content around investing for members who have never made a trade before. The company will also be enlisting the help of investing ambassadors, people who are “savvy in the space” to help with the new product, Glover said.
Investing through the platform won’t come with trading fees, which Glover admits means the company is not making much money from it, but it is being used to attract and grow the customer base. “Therein lies the profitability,” he said.
Right now, members can only invest in publicly traded companies. Of the thousands of businesses listed on the stock market, fewer than 10 are Black-founded. At some point, Greenwood hopes to give members a chance to invest in some of the private companies listed in its GreenBook, a directory of Black and Latino-owned businesses.
The launch comes months after a business dispute Greenwood had with co-working and networking hub The Gathering Spot (TGS), one of the companies it acquired last year, spilled into the public.
The fight pitted TGS co-founders Ryan Wilson and T’Keel “TK” Petersen on one side versus Greenwood founders Judge and Glover.
A trio of lawsuits and the publicly announced dismissal of Petersen — which was later reversed — stirred concerns about the high-profile partnership aimed at helping Black entrepreneurs.
About a week after the acrimony became public, the sides said their legal disputes had been resolved and the business leaders have set out to try to heal divides that formed within their memberships.
Since the summer’s discord, Glover said things have gone back to “business as usual.”
“[TGS is] still a warm, important part of our community,” he said.
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