“Can a mission-driven Black-owned community bank use embedded finance partnerships to close the racial wealth gap at scale without sacrificing its CDFI identity?”
Founded in 1996 by Kevin Cohee and Teri Williams Cohee, OneUnited Bank established itself as the largest Black-owned bank and the first Black-owned internet bank in the United States. The bank's core mission has consistently centered on closing the racial wealth gap for African-American communities. Rather than building all products in-house, the bank has embraced third-party embedded finance partnerships — most notably with Lendistry for small business lending and MX for data aggregation — to extend its product set beyond traditional deposit banking without the overhead of proprietary fintech infrastructure.
Oneunited Bank discloses OneUnited Bank (in-house) as its banking provider, according to the Embedded Finance Index 2026.
Oneunited Bank does not disclose a bank charter of its own; its banking services are provided through OneUnited Bank (in-house).
Oneunited Bank connects to bank accounts through mx.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 5 layers in Oneunited Bank's stack: Banking / BaaS (OneUnited Bank (in-house)); Lending (Small business term loans, Non-revolving lines of credit and PPP loans (historic)); Open banking (mx); Unified APIs (MX); Transaction enrichment (MX).
Oneunited Bank was founded by Kevin Cohee and Teri Williams Cohee and is founded in 1996, headquartered in Boston, MA.
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Oneunited Bank 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.