Andrew Young has been a mayor, a U.S. representative, and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Now he says he’s counting on a new digital banking platform, focused on Black and Latino communities, to address some of the systemic injustices he’s been fighting throughout his career. With rapper and activist Michael Render, better known as “Killer Mike,” and Bounce TV founder Ryan Glover, Young is helping to start Greenwood, named in honor of the Tulsa community known as the “Black Wall Street” before it was destroyed by a White mob in 1921.

Atlanta-based Greenwood is on track to open in January. Like other online banking platforms such as Chime and Aspiration, the bank will connect customers to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-insured savings and checking accounts and payment platforms. In addition, Greenwood will focus on offering business loans and financial counseling services to Black and Latino entrepreneurs. It will also help facilitate donations to causes such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Young, Render, and Glover have raised about $3.4 million from angel investors—65% of them African-American—and already have almost 175,000 prospective customers signed up on a waiting list, says Glover, the company’s founder and chairman. The reception prompted the co-founders to fast-track a Series A funding round for the end of 2020, seeking $20 million and giving the bank a valuation of $50 million to $75 million. Greenwood is in talks with two prospective partner banks that will provide the FDIC-insured banking services for Greenwood’s customers. Young, Render, and Glover spoke with Bloomberg Markets in October about their plans.

BLOOMBERG MARKETS: Why do we need Greenwood now?

ANDREW YOUNG: There was a Citigroup study that said that discrimination between 2000 and 2020 probably cost the economy $16 trillion. That is underserved minorities, underpaid women. They [traditional banks] really kept that much money out of the economy simply by ignoring the potential of predominantly Black and Hispanic and female entrepreneurs. This is something I’ve been working on since the civil rights movement. There have been people who have always known that you can’t integrate the nation without integrating the money. We used to say in the ’60s that we don’t just want to fight to get a hamburger at the lunch counter one day—we want to own our own sandwich shop.

BM: What problems can Greenwood try to solve?

MICHAEL RENDER : We’re alleviating a predatory problem in working-class neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods where established banks left us even after being rescued by the government a couple times. They abandoned our communities, and we were left with check-cashing places and liquor stores—the places that had predatory rates like 20% on the dollar to cash a check. If you’re a poor or working-class person and you have a check that’s 200 bucks, to have to give up $40 of that $200 and then work with $160 and try to fulfill all your obligations is almost evil. This counterbalances that.

BM: How do you pick the right partner?

RYAN GLOVER: There’s a disconnect that traditional banking has had with the African-American community. Our banking partners have to share our same objectives and our core values.

MR: Whoever chooses to partner with us [is] going to have to ally with us not only in terms of the raw system of banking but also in terms of themes and philosophies and uplifting the community. Even down to your dollars and cents—instead [of all of it] being kept as pure profit, going to the United Negro College Fund and platforms like the NAACP that have been fighting for equality in this country for over 100 years.

There is a real will and want to learn: What is the right thing to do in this moment? Right now, corporations want to learn. Because they not only realize that it’s wrong morally or wrong philosophically, I think that they understand it’s bad for business to have Black people out of the financial loop in this country.

BM: Why are you focused on entrepreneurship?

AY: [We see Black and Latinx entrepreneurs] as one of the largest potential markets. The existing Black banks see that, too, but they don’t have the capital. I think of a kid that has done a wonderful job in my neighborhood, helping people to cut down trees. He needed investment in his business. But it’s not just giving him money. It’s giving him counseling. It’s helping him in his audit, making sure he’s paying his taxes and taking the deduction for Social Security from his workers. It’s helping him to set up a business. You’re not just handing him a check.

BM: What’s the purpose of the #BankBlack movement?

MR: #BankBlack is not exclusionary, and Greenwood is not exclusionary. It’s created to circumvent some problems that working-class people—no matter what color—have. The BankBlack movement is the first step in the American dream: to be able to do simple things like buy a home and a car, make sure you have a savings, make sure you have something to save for retirement. It helps working-class people work their way and matriculate their way up the ladder. It helps working-class people do things like buy a first home to make sure that they have something to leave their children.

The Black dollar is a powerful force in this economy. And if we help the Black community get financially literate and properly focus that Black dollar to grow businesses to further help competition in this country, then the banking system wins, greater society wins, the Black community wins.

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.