The SMB Challenger Banks: Novo

At just 5 years old, Novo is tied for the oldest provider on our digital SMB banking list. The company was founded in 2016 and launched services in 2018. The company says it surpassed $1B in cumulative transactions in April 2021 with $600M in Q1 alone.  That implies a minimum 8x year-over-year growth rate (through April). With 100,000 accounts, that’s an average spend of $2,000/mo.

The startup has raised $46M, a $5M seed in March 2019 and a $41M A-round in June 2021. Its first outside capital was from the Barclays Techstar accelerator in 2017 (see Techstars demo here).

The company is an aggressive online marketer attracting nearly 300,000 visits via paid marketing across 740 publishers vs. 80,000 via organic search according to SEMrush (Aug 2021). It also estimates Novo’s website traffic at 320,000 visits from 130,000 unique visitors (note: SimilarWeb estimates 600,000 monthly visits), the highest level among U.S. SMB digital banks.

The banking partner is Middlesex Savings Bank, a Natick, MA-based community bank with $5.7B in assets and 32 branches in the Boston suburbs.

Product features:

• Business checking
• Debit card
• Invoicing with embedded payment
• Sub-account (called Reserve)
• Integrations with Stripe, Shopify, Wise, Quickbooks, Zapier, Stripe, Slack

Pricing:

• Free no-interest
• $50 min deposit
• ATM fees reimbursed

Perks:
(Note: Most “Novo Perks” are available for any business and/or startup, you wouldn’t have to be a Novo customer. Booking.com is one exception, where the 6% cashback goes directly to your Novo card)

• Stripe ($20k in card processing volume, worth $500)
• Google Cloud ($3k credit; though it says $300 on Google’s website)
• Booking.com (6% cash back)
• Gusto (3 months free, worth $500)
• Quickbooks (40% off first 6 months, worth $150)
• ZenDesk (1st 6 months free, worth $540 per seat)
• Snapchat ($150 ad credit)
• Salesforce (50% off Essentials, worth $150)
• Segment ($50k annual credit for 1st 2 years)
• Hubspot (30% off first year, 15% ongoing, worth $1400 per seat)
• Homebase (1st month free, worth $50)