Jonathan Gatlin wanted to start a bank for freemasons 10 years ago.
Freemasonry is a 300-year-old fraternal organization where men unite over values such as friendship, helping those in distress, community service and personal improvement. The somewhat secretive group, with its networks of lodges and grand lodges, is complex for outsiders to understand, as is the way money flows throughout the organization.
One of the biggest pain points for the lodges, or local chapters, is collecting dues from members. Some organizations related to masonry, which take cash donations, are charged fees for depositing large sums of cash at their banks.
"Masonry is a very quiet thing," said Gatlin, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and became a mason in 2010. "It's everywhere and yet no one knows about it." He was inspired to join after his nephew received care at a children's hospital run by the Shrine, an organization related to freemasonry.
Gatlin started kicking around the idea of a bank for freemasons with other members in 2011. A banking attorney advised him and his interested crew to buy a charter for a failing bank, but the institutions they spoke with preferred to be acquired by a larger institution. In 2013, the group shelved the idea.
Ten years later, the project is coming to fruition.
Masons Financial will be a digital banking app for masons, their families, the lodges where freemasons gather, the overarching governing bodies known as grand lodges, and "appendant bodies," or connected organizations that offer advanced teaching. Gatlin, the CEO, plans to start beta testing the service before Thanksgiving and launch it to the public at the beginning of 2023.
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"Fraternal and religious organizations, labor unions — these people have common interests," said Sam Kilmer, managing director at Cornerstone Advisors. These ties "can be powerful because they are emotional."
The organization has received scant attention in traditional consumer banking, although U.S. Bancorp in Minneapolis introduced affinity credit cards for a freemason group called the Scottish Rite in 2005. The cards were discontinued in 2015.
Gatlin hopes enthusiasm for freemasonry will propel its growth.
"You've got a group of guys who are obsessed about this organization," said Gatlin. "There is not a mason out there who is not proud to be a mason. Everyone wears their ring. Most have an emblem on their car." When he first explored the idea 10 years ago, more than 100,000 people signaled their interest.
Several months ago, Arcady Lapiro, the CEO and founder of Agora Services, reached out to get the gears moving again.
Agora is a banking-as-a-service technology company that builds white-labeled products for financial institutions and helps fintechs get their banking services off the ground. The company will provide much of the underlying technology and services for Masons Financial, including a bank partner it declined to name, payment rails, card issuance and compliance solutions. Lapiro had been in touch with Gatlin when the idea was first brewing. More recently, Lapiro was contemplating the value of niche banking and which segments had not yet been addressed.
"I wanted to go after a niche market and I remembered this one," he said.
On Gatlin's end, when Lapiro contacted him several months ago, "I thought, man, this is not my plan right now," said Gatlin. "But I'm very passionate about the fraternity."
Gatlin is funding the venture himself; he and his wife own a real estate development company.
Masons Financial will have several features beyond deposit accounts tailored to the structure and needs of freemasonry.
"Our biggest challenge, like most organizations, is getting people to pay dues," said Gatlin. "It takes up so much time." He is planning a feature where lodges can send payment requests to members with Masons Financial accounts and lodges can transfer their "per capita" shares to grand lodges. There will also be money-pooling and payment-splitting capabilities, because brothers will frequently chip in cash to send flowers to members or their families when one is ill. The banking service will verify with other members or lodge officers that applicants are freemasons.
Later on, Gatlin wants Masons Financial to expand into business banking for its members, many of whom own businesses. He expects the bank will make money off interchange revenue and user fees for higher-end products or upgrades.
Kilmer points out that banks don't need an extensive list of services to appeal to a niche, and says the features Masons Financial is planning may be enough.
"You can do three things that are a bit of a pain for people to do with their current banks," he said.
