Payment Tech Supported by Kitces Raises $2M Online
The funds raised via crowdfunding will help AdvicePay launch an enterprise version of its technology, which can be used by investor clients to pay advisors directly from checking accounts and by credit card.
A payment-processing platform for advisors has raised $2 million via crowdfunding in less than eight weeks. These funds will be used by AdvicePay to roll out an enterprise version of the technology for hybrid independent broker-dealers and large RIAs, according to advisor, blogger and AdvicePay co-founder Michael Kitces.
Advisors can use AdvicePay to charge advice fees, ongoing retainers and standalone planning fees without paper checks, invoices and manual processes. Clients can pay directly from checking accounts and by credit card.
“We chose the innovative approach of crowdfunding with advisors vs. going the traditional venture capital route to ensure that we would be able to stay focused on serving the needs of our core target market of financial advisors,” Kitces said in a statement.
Built over the past four months, AdvicePay Enterprise includes tools for organizations serving advisors, such as a home-office portal for billing and payment processing, compliance and security features and help for new-advisor onboarding.
“As a solution built by financial advisors, for financial advisors, we knew the advisor community would immediately understand the need and problem that AdvicePay was built to solve,” explained Kitces. “This approach was more than validated by the high advisor demand we saw from just one article on the Nerd’s Eye View blog, allowing us to get full commitments for the entire funding need in less than two months.”
AdvicePay will have an exhibit at the next Technology Tools for Today (T3) event, set to take place Jan. 29-Feb. 1 near Dallas, and at the TD Ameritrade Institutional LINC conference, being held Feb. 6-9 in San Diego.
“As the fee-for-service movement in financial planning gains momentum, more and more advisors are working with clients by directly charging for their advice outside of or alongside an asset management fee for portfolio management,” according to AdvicePay co-founder and CEO Alan Moore.
“Firms have been looking for a solution to support a fee-for-service model that is compliant and relieves them of the operational nightmares of manual processes for handing a high volume of fee payments,” Moore added. “As a result, we are working with some of the largest organizations in the industry, with several in the onboarding process and a very robust pipeline.”