The daughter of an immigrant, Stephany Kirkpatrick founded Orum in 2019 on the belief that consumers should have immediate access to their money.
She began her career as a certified financial planner, and was one of the early employees at LearnVest, a personal financial planning company. Kirkpatrick was vice president of operations and financial planning, and learned what it takes to scale a fast-growing business in the early days of fintech. LearnVest was sold to Northwestern Mutual in 2015, and three years later, Northwestern shuttered the firm.
After spending 2018 working as general manager of digital strategy at SoulCycle, Kirkpatrick decided to venture out on her own.
Orum’s mission is to increase inclusivity in the financial system by creating the simplest API for fast, reliable payments. Kirkpatrick said that for people in underserved communities, the inability to access money is crippling. For people who live paycheck to paycheck, faster access to their money could mean avoiding burdensome overdraft fees and being able to pay their rent on time.
Last year, the company launched Verify, a patented bank account verification product. The technology, built on top of FedNow and RTP, determines within 15 seconds whether a bank account is open and valid before payments are initiated. And to help address the need for underserved communities to have access to their cash, Verify covers 100% of all U.S. bank accounts for both consumers and businesses.
One of the hardest — and most rewarding — challenges of her career thus far has been working with the Federal Reserve to set up payment processing and settlement on FedNow. “Meeting the criteria for direct access requires organizations to meet and exceed The Federal Reserve’s notoriously rigorous diligence, contracting and IT testing requirements, as well as those of sponsoring financial institutions,” Kirkpatrick said.
The process reminded her that one can’t rush the critical aspects of product building, “even though your instinct as a founder in fintech is to always be moving at lightning speed,” she said.
Female entrepreneurs are dramatically underfunded compared to their male counterparts. Thus far, Kirkpatrick has raised $82 million from investors including Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Homebrew and American Express Ventures.
While she’s grateful for the support she’s been given, she is also lending other female entrepreneurs a helping hand. She mentors female founders looking to scale their own startups, equipping them with practical advice on identifying and seizing market opportunities.