Totem is a digital bank (neobank) co-founded by Amber Buker and CTO Richard Chance to serve Native American communities. It partners with First Pryority Bank, a Tulsa community bank, to act as its sponsor bank and hold customer deposits, enabling FDIC‑insured accounts. The product is being built to help more Native Americans become banked, grow credit, and access tribal benefits more efficiently than slow paper checks or fee‑prone prepaid cards. Totem is designed to address systemic barriers such as long travel distances to branches, credit invisibility, identity‑verification issues, and non‑mail‑deliverable households that impede debit card issuance. The team plans to work directly with tribes to improve benefit awareness and distribution, and they are building a consumer banking app. The company disclosed a $2.2 million pre‑seed raise to fund development and operations ahead of a planned Spring 2023 launch.

Total raised

$2M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Nov 2022