Vance raises $5.8M to let people bank in any country through one interface

Global neo-banking platform Vance has raised $5.8 million in a seed round led by Hummingbird Ventures.

Global Founders Capital, Y Combinator, Soma Capital and seasoned angels such as Alan Rutledge and Gokul Rajaram also joined. 

The startup will the money to expand its 10-member team to 30 in the next six months. It will also create products like remittances, savings accounts, and investments.

Founded in 2022 by Parth Garg, a Stanford dropout, Vance aims to change the way global citizens engage with financial services. Its vision is to build an all-encompassing banking platform, allowing users to seamlessly manage separate accounts, exchange currencies, and eventually invest in equities across markets.

Unlike multi-currency wallets, a Vance account allows users to transact using local rails in different countries. The goal is to enable users to use direct debit in the US while seamlessly leveraging India’s UPI rails through the same account.

Vance was born out of Parth’s personal experience when he moved to India eight months ago and faced challenges in getting a credit card despite having a credit history in the US and the UAE.

Parth Garg, Founder and CEO Vance, said, “Banking and payments have come leaps and bounds over the last decade, but when it comes to international transactions, we still run on archaic systems. It is time to rethink global banking from the ground up. With an ever increasing global population, a global bank is the need of the hour more than ever.” 

With Vance, international travellers can spend like locals, migrants can send personal remittances to their home country at live rates, and cross-border freelancers can receive payments without the hefty commissions.

It envisions a world where you don’t need multiple bank accounts in multiple countries to be financially included in an ecosystem. The goal is to build a borderless banking account that opens up realms of using banking products that are currently not possible.

Vance will let people bank in any country through just one interface. 

Vance was a part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 batch and plans on going live in the UAE and UK by the end of 2022. By Q1 2023, the goal is to launch in five additional countries.