Onyx Private believes wealthy professionals need their own bank, so it’s building one

Image credit: Onyx Private / Victor Santos, co-founder and CEO of Onyx Private

Digital bank Onyx Private today announced $4.1 million in new funding to provide private banking and investment services specifically tailored for high-net-worth Millennials and Gen Zers.

Village Global, Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital, One Way Ventures, 186 Ventures and Olive Tree Capital participated in the investment.

In partnership with Piermont Bank, Onyx Private offers digital banking services, including current accounts, a debit card and cashback on payments and purchases. On the investment side, the fintech is developing investment portfolios from high-yield, fixed-income portfolios, such as cash-sweep accounts and US Treasury bills, with minimum requirements of $100 and low fees.

There is an application process to join Onyx Private and customers can choose between a free plan or a premium plan which is $50 per month or $40 per month if you pay the membership in one payment.

Investment services are managed by Helium Advisors and the brokerage account is through Pershing, a clearing house owned by Bank of New York Mellon.

In addition, the company offers a “lifestyle concierge” service, via a digital personal assistant, to help book events, dining, hotels and flights, and even buy luxury gifts, such as jewelry.

Victor Santos, Douglas Lopes and Tiago Passinato launched the company in 2022. Santos, who came to the US as a child, previously co-founded banQi, a Brazilian neobank focused on financial inclusion that was acquired by Via Varejo in May 2020.

Onyx Private’s banking dashboard and card. Image credit: Onyx Private

While creating products for low-income individuals, Santos told TechCrunch that he and his co-founders realized there was a gap in the market: lots of options for the very wealthy or low- and middle-class, but not many for those in between.

“These are people who are not necessarily rich, but are wealthy professionals, like lawyers, doctors or people who work in technology,” Santos said. “The goal of Onyx is to build a more modern, more accessible private bank and democratize the tools that are currently only available to the ‘ultra-rich’.”

Since launching almost a year ago, Onyx Private has grown 30% month over month and processes over $4 million in transaction payment value per month. The company is approaching $5 million in TPV with a goal of 5x that volume by the end of the year, Santos said.

Next, Santos, Lopes and Passinato envision Onyx Private to be the “next-generation UBS,” and the new funding will go toward that goal. The company plans to put some capital into new product lines and to unveil a human financial advisor in the app within the next year that will provide financial, estate planning and tax advice. Much of the growth so far has been from referrals; However, the company will now invest in marketing.

“There’s a lot of pressure on these new low-income banks, and what we think is powerful is that our average income per user and the average balance of our user is 10 to 12 times more than these traditional neo-banks,” Santos said. “We’re small, but it shows that there’s a much different demographic, and there’s a higher willingness to pay for premium services from that demographic.”