‍Without Bond, it would have taken over a year to get to market. Our customers want this product yesterday. We’re building on a platform so that we can focus on a great customer experience.”
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- Alan Akina, President & Founder, TeamUp

The Challenge

The founders at Teamup observed how despite many advances in financial technologies and products, when it came to handling the per diem payments between universities, coaches and the players, it was still cash based. TeamUp wanted to change this and they needed a platform that could support their vision.

Their team was small so they needed to work with a partner who could provide the support they would need in making their vision a reality. They wanted to do more than give the players a debit card with some money on it. To make this work, they needed the coaches to have a special account to receive the per diem and an easy way for the coach to distribute that money to the students. They also wanted to give the students something extra, something different. Something that would prepare them for the world after school.

The Solution

Instantly we knew what TeamUp needed was our credit builder card. We created  deposit accounts for the coaches so that they could receive the money for the per diem and then distribute it to the players. This gave a high level of security and accountability. For the students, they would get the credit builder card which was also attached to a secured deposit account. The CBC allowed students to spend their per diem anywhere cards are accepted. CBC cards protect users from falling into debt and ensures that the balance is paid off automatically, but more importantly Bond reports these payments to the credit bureaus, helping the students get a headstart on their credit building journey.

Bond’s card APIs easily allows TeamUp to deliver individual and unique designs to each university they work with.

We made sure they didn’t have to go through this process by themselves which meant everything went faster and more smoothly.

- Toma Vranjes, Implementation Manager, Bond

The Approach

Bond worked closely with the TeamUp team, engaging in weekly calls ensuring that everything and everyone was ready for the process. Bond did more than provide the technology. Through weekly calls, Bond dedicated itself to understanding TeamUp’s vision and to helping them get ready for the process of launching an innovative product. This included lots of feedback on everything from Due diligence readiness to UI/UX, marketing pans, End User Agreements and card designs.

The Result

In the end, by working with Bond, TeamUp was able to secure bank approvals 36% faster than what is typical when working with other providers and when they launched the program they had 100% take up by all eligible players and coaches. Bond continues to assist TeamUp with customer support as they onboard more and more teams and schools, each with unique card designs.