Lili, which works to provide online banking services for freelancers, notched $10 million in a seed funding round led by Group 11, according to a press release.
Foundation Capital, AltaIR Capital, Primary Venture Partners and Torch Capital also participated, the release states.
The money will go toward building up Lili’s platform and expanding the product, marketing and operations teams, the release states.
Lili touts itself as the only company to work specifically on online banking platforms for the freelance worker community. There are around 60 million freelancers in the U.S., or 35 percent of the workforce. Lili’s platform offers direct deposit, expense management tools that can help users track their funds, a tax saving tool that automatically sets some money aside, mobile alerts, and the ability to instantly send and receive money.
Lilac Bar David, co-founder and CEO, said the app could save freelancers 60 hours of their time and $1,700 per year through sensible financial management.
“We’ve analyzed the challenges of the modern worker in all aspects of banking, taxes, expenses and savings and have created an easy-to-use mobile app that helps them thrive in today’s ever-changing work environment,” David said in the release.
David, along with fellow co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Liran Zelkha, have experience in banking for the past 20 years, the release states. The two founded Israel-based challenger bank Pepper. Zelkha has also worked as a freelancer in the past.
Freelancers, or gig workers as they’re sometimes called, have long had problems getting payment, with many workers having to spend considerable time and energy chasing down their employers for payments, which can come weeks or months after the projects are finished.
According to a recent PYMNTS report, it will be imperative that companies find ways to pay gig workers faster going forward, or else they could risk ruining those relationships.
