Hill Harper, an actor who plays Dr. Marcus Andrews on the ABC medical show The Good Doctor, is launching an investing and payments app geared toward minority communities, particularly Black and Latinx consumers. The app will go live on June 1.

Why should we care?
The Black Wall Street app – not to be confused with digital platform for Black-owned businesses Official Black Wall Street – aims to help minority investors garner access to the financial system, including wealth management and payments tools. The app, according to Harper, will include a digital wallet for peer-to-peer payments and cryptocurrency trading capabilities. The platform aims to help communities of color build wealth and offer financial education resources. “There were three pillars that created the wealth that was created in the Black Wall Street [in Tulsa],” he said in an interview, with the first two being institutional ownership and institutional trust by the community. “Pillar number three was the movement of money or capital within the ecosystem where dollars changed hands 60 to 100 times within a year before it left that Black community.” To kick off the launch, Harper will lead a 30-city financial literacy tour. The Black Wall Street app is the latest in a series of financial platforms geared toward minority communities, including banking startups Greenwood, First Boulevard, and Cheese. Meanwhile, legacy banks are investing in minority financial institutions as a way of bolstering their inclusion-focused objectives, including Wells Fargo. This week, the bank announced investments in five minority depository institutions – part of a pledge to invest up to $50M in Black-owned banks.