“Can freelancers get corporate-grade banking, merchant processing, and factoring in one app?”
Joust was founded in 2017 as a digital bank purpose-built for freelancers and solopreneurs, offering a combined FDIC-insured deposit account, merchant acquiring, and same-day invoice financing (PayArmour) via a network of community banks. After launching publicly in 2019 and adding analytics and card management in 2020, Joust was acquired by ZenBusiness later that year, folding its banking capabilities into ZenBusiness's small-business formation platform. The joustsec.com domain today points to Joust Security Inc., an apparently unrelated infrastructure security business — the fintech operation effectively ended with the ZenBusiness acquisition.
Joust processes payments through Joust merchant account (self-operated via community bank partner).
Joust's lending and capital products are provided by Joust PayArmour (in-house).
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 2 layers in Joust's stack: Payments / PSP (Joust merchant account (self-operated via community bank partner)); Lending (Joust PayArmour (in-house), PayArmour — same-day invoice funding / invoice factoring and Guaranteed invoice payment).
Joust was founded by Lamine Zarrad and George Kurtyka and is founded in 2017, headquartered in Austin, Texas, United States.
Joust has raised $2.6M+ (pre-acquisition) in total (latest round: Seed, 2019).
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Joust and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.