The business bank account that also does the books - checking, accounting, invoicing and taxes, folded into a single app for small business owners.
Photographed as a brand mark on Lili navy. The company is a financial technology firm, not a bank; banking services are provided by Sunrise Banks, N.A., Member FDIC.
Lili is a financial technology company that runs an all-in-one business banking platform for small businesses. Instead of asking an owner to open a checking account in one place, track expenses in another, send invoices in a third and guess at taxes in a fourth, Lili collapses those jobs into one login. A business checking account sits at the center; wrapped around it are bookkeeping, expense categorization, invoicing, automated tax set-asides and, more recently, high-yield savings.
The pitch is less about adding features and more about removing work. Transactions are categorized as they land. A tax bucket quietly siphons off a share of income so the April bill is not a surprise. Reports - profit and loss, balance sheet, expense summaries - are generated from the same account that moves the money, rather than exported and reconciled by hand.
Founded in 2018 by Lilac Bar David and Liran Zelkha and headquartered in New York, Lili began by banking freelancers and solopreneurs. Over time it has widened its aim toward growing, multi-employee businesses that need higher balances, team access and more advanced controls - without the overhead of enterprise software.
What people can actually do with Lili is mundane in the best sense. Open a business account without a branch visit or a minimum balance. Swipe a Visa debit card and watch the purchase file itself into the right expense category. Send a client an invoice from the same app that holds the deposit. Let a set percentage of every payment slide into a tax bucket so quarterly estimates do not become an emergency. Grant an accountant or a teammate scoped access rather than sharing a password. At month-end, pull a profit-and-loss statement that was assembled as the money moved, not reconstructed afterward.
The through-line is time. For an owner who is also the marketer, the salesperson and the person who answers support email, the hours lost to financial admin are hours not spent on the business itself. Lili's argument is that the bank account is the natural place to solve that, because it already sees every dollar in and out.
Lili's users are U.S. small business owners: freelancers, solopreneurs, contractors and, increasingly, small teams running multi-employee operations. These are people whose expertise is their craft, not accounting - and who rarely have a finance department to hand the paperwork to.
For a small business, the bank and the bookkeeper never talk. Money moves in one system while the record of it lives in another, and taxes are a year-end scramble. That fragmentation costs time and quietly costs money - missed deductions, late invoices, under-saved tax bills.
"Lili is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Sunrise Banks, N.A., Member FDIC."
Fee-free checking with a Lili Visa debit card, no minimum balance, ACH, domestic and international wires, and mobile check deposit.
Real-time transaction categorization, receipt capture, and auto-generated P&L, balance sheet and expense reports.
Automatically sets aside a share of income into a tax bucket and simplifies filing with ready-made reports.
Create and send invoices, accept payments, and connect popular payment apps - built for getting paid faster.
Reports banking activity to Dun & Bradstreet so young businesses can establish and grow a credit profile.
Tiered savings paying up to 4.00% APY, with FDIC insurance coverage expanded to $3M through Sunrise Banks.
Fee-free overdraft protection up to a set limit for eligible account holders.
A secure server that connects AI assistants to client-authorized banking data so accountants work faster.
Where it fits in the market: Lili sits in the crowded U.S. neobanking-for-SMBs race alongside Novo, Bluevine, Mercury, Found, Relay, Brex and Ramp - and, on the bookkeeping side, tools like QuickBooks. Its wedge is bundling banking and accounting so tightly that they become one product rather than two integrations. Where spend-management players court venture-backed startups and traditional banks court established firms with relationship managers, Lili has aimed at the long tail of owner-operators who fall between those two worlds.
That positioning is also shifting. The company's early identity was the freelancer's bank; its 2025 and 2026 moves - higher savings yields, larger FDIC coverage, multi-user access and an AI layer for accountants - read as a deliberate walk up-market toward businesses with employees, larger balances and more complex needs. The bet is that a customer acquired as a solo operator can grow into a heavier account rather than graduating to a competitor, and that keeping accountants close through tools like the MCP server makes Lili stickier at exactly the moment a business starts delegating its books.
Backers include Group 11 (led the Series B), Target Global, AltaIR Capital, Foundation Capital, Primary Venture Partners, Torch Capital and Zeev Ventures. The Series B, announced in May 2021, targeted freelancer business management and access to credit.
Lilac Bar David and Liran Zelkha start Lili in New York to bank freelancers and small businesses.
A $15M Series A funds expansion; Lili reaches roughly 100,000 accounts as accounting and tax tools arrive.
Group 11 leads a $55M round, taking total funding to about $80M as users pass 200,000.
Named one of Fast Company's World's 50 Most Innovative Companies.
Launches BusinessBuild credit building and international payments; raises savings to 4.00% APY and FDIC coverage to $3M.
Unveils a redesigned platform for multi-employee businesses and an MCP server bringing AI banking insights to accountants.
CEO Lilac Bar David is a two-time bank builder. Before Lili, she founded Pepper, described as Israel's first mobile-only bank, and spent more than two decades in banking and payments. Co-founder Liran Zelkha leads technology. That background - having already built a digital bank from scratch - shapes Lili's core bet: that small business owners want fewer financial decisions, not more features, and that automating the boring ones is the product.
"Lilac Bar David has more than 20 years of experience challenging the status quo with innovative offerings in banking and payments."
Interviews and product demos featuring Lili and its founder.
Sources: Lili (lili.co), Wikipedia, Crunchbase, Forbes, Calcalist/CTech, BusinessWire, PR Newswire, American Banker, PitchBook, Tracxn. This profile compiles publicly reported information; figures such as revenue are third-party estimates and may be approximate. Lili is a financial technology company, not a bank; banking services are provided by Sunrise Banks, N.A., Member FDIC. APY, FDIC coverage, fees and features are subject to change - verify current terms at lili.co.