Totem, a Native American-focused fintech, shuts down

Dive Brief:

Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Totem Technologies is shutting down, the fintech’s founder and CEO, Amber Buker, said in a LinkedIn post late last week.
“Totem has come to the end of its road,” Buker wrote in a post on the website.
The neobank, which had raised about $2.2 million in pre-seed funding, had about 500 customers, according to Buker.

Dive Insight:

Totem billed itself as “banking by and for Indigenous people,” whom it said are more likely to be unbanked and live farther from bank branches. The fintech, which had a mobile banking app that offered a spending account, debit card and early access to paychecks, rolled out its product to consumers in July 2023, American Banker reported.

Pryor, Oklahoma-based First Pryority Bank provided banking services for Totem and issued the fintech’s debit card. The startup’s website also said it shared a portion of revenue with its tribal partners. One of those was the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, which would publicize Totem’s services to its members in exchange for a cut of the fintech’s interchange revenue.

Amber Buker, CEO of fintech Totem, poses for a photo — Amber Buker

Courtesy of Totem

In her LinkedIn post, Buker didn’t provide details on when Totem notified customers of the company’s shuttering, or what specifically led to the startup’s demise. But she suggested investors wanted to see more progress, more quickly from the fintech.

“We built an ethical business model that showed it is possible to serve ‘risky’ or ‘niche’ populations when you build holistically and tap into the broader needs of their communities through value-add services like payments,” said Buker, an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. “But businesses looking to serve Indian Country can only do so at the speed of trust. And that comes much, much more slowly than the pace at which a venture-backed company is expected to move.”

Buker didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, a Canadian venture capital firm that invested in Totem.

Buker remains involved in a legal dispute with Richard Chance, the fintech’s co-founder and former chief technology officer. Last year, he accused Buker of denying him a promised ownership stake in the company, American Banker reported. He also said she threatened legal action against him for misappropriating the fintech’s intellectual property.

“I am incredibly proud of the work we've done in just two short years to improve financial wellness and banking access for Native Americans nationwide,” Buker wrote. “We built a thoughtful, culturally relevant banking product for our People.”