Alkami sold small banks the one thing they could not build: an app as good as Chase's. Community banks and credit unions held customers' trust, but their websites and phone apps lagged far behind. Customers noticed, and many drifted to the big banks. By April 2021 the pandemic had pushed even reluctant customers to bank on their phones. Alkami, based in Plano, Texas, went public with 151 banks and credit unions on its platform.

Leveling the Field

Gary Nelson and Stephen Bohanon founded Alkami to level the playing field for smaller financial institutions. The company began business in 2009 and incorporated in Delaware in 2011. The bet was that banks would pay a subscription for one cloud platform that tied their old core systems to modern apps. Alkami linked more than 200 back-office and fintech tools behind a single login. By the end of 2020 it served nearly 9.7 million of its clients' customers.

Thirty Dollars a Share

Alkami priced 6 million shares at $30 in April 2021 and listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market as ALKT. Its prospectus cited an analysis that ranked it among the fastest-growing digital banking platforms in the United States, measured by registered users. New clients were also buying more: the 2020 group of new clients averaged 15 products each. Alkami still trades on Nasdaq as ALKT.

Cover: Main Street, Mahanoy City, Joseph Pennell. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a small-town main street (community banking).