Finli

Finli is a financial technology company that provides a digital back office for small businesses, delivered primarily through banks and credit unions on a white-label basis. Its platform covers digital payments (ACH, credit card and Apple Pay), professional invoicing with automated email and SMS reminders, CRM and customer communications with secure document management, inventory and pricing management, and quoting for bidding and proposal workflows.

The company originally launched as a mobile-first payment management platform for service-based and micro businesses in the United States. Owners could open an account and issue an invoice within minutes from a mobile device or desktop, send invoices by email, SMS or messaging app, create recurring invoices, look up customer information, check payment status, reconcile cash and check payments, and run collections through automated emails and texts. Finli charged no merchant transaction fees on business bank-to-bank transfers, contrasting itself with tools such as QuickBooks and Square that it described as complex or costly for very small operators.

Finli now markets the same toolset to financial institutions as a way to expand small business offerings, capture first-party transaction data for lending and relationship decisions, drive deposits by routing digital receivables into the institution, and reduce ACH debit origination underwriting volume by processing payments through Finli instead. It operates as a Public Benefit Corporation and a Certified B Corporation, and positions its platform as helping institutions meet Community Reinvestment Act requirements and serve underrepresented businesses.

Founding story

CEO Lori Shao spent about 20 years building mobile technology for fintech and payment companies before starting Finli roughly three years prior to mid-2022. She has said the idea came from noticing that despite working in technology, she still used a checkbook to pay for household services such as landscaping and after-school programs. The name Finli is described as standing for "financial lift," reflecting a stated mission of financially lifting local communities one microbusiness at a time. Shao immigrated to the United States with her parents in the summer of 1991 and has publicly written about that path from immigrant to CEO.

Business model

Finli licenses its software to financial institutions on a white-label basis, positioning itself as a partner rather than a competitor to banks: deposits, merchant services and card strategies remain with the institution, and customer data flows to the bank for relationship management and lending decisions. Delivery options include a white-labeled standalone platform (about 24 hours to launch, no code required), single sign-on integration (2-4 weeks) and custom integrations with variable timelines. Earlier, when selling directly to small businesses, Finli operated a freemium model for invoicing and payment acceptance, with a Pro package starting at $25 per month for advanced tools such as recurring payments and ACH direct debit, and no merchant transaction fees on bank-to-bank transfers.

Software delivered to financial institutions as a white-label platform, alongside a direct small business model that has combined free invoicing and payment acceptance with a paid Pro subscription starting at $25 per month for features such as recurring payments and ACH direct debit; bank-to-bank transfers carry no merchant transaction fees.

Traction

Finli reported 500 business accounts at the end of 2021, growing to about 3,000 by mid-2022, roughly a 500% increase over six months, with 11 employees at that time. Total funding stood at $9.5 million as of July 2022. The company achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance in September 2024.

Latest developments

Finli announced completion of SOC 2 Type II compliance in September 2024 and promoted FinPitch, a virtual pitch contest focused on business banking innovation, in November 2024. In December 2024 it published a first-person account by CEO Lori Shao about her path from immigrant to CEO. The company's current site positions Finli as a white-label digital back office delivered to small businesses through banks and credit unions.