Today, the entrepreneur has an 800 FICO credit score, but when he arrived in 2008, he said, he couldn’t find a bank that would touch him as he tried to build credit.
“I was shocked and I just didn’t feel like the banking system was treating immigrants fairly,” said Lian, co-founder and chief executive officer of Pasadena-based Extra Financial Inc., doing business as Cheese. “We want to change that.”
Since 2008, Lian has helped build two successful startups: Santa Monica-based Moolah Science, sold to an unidentified Fortune 500 company in 2016, and downtown-based Honey Science Corp., sold to PayPal Holdings Inc. for $4 billion in 2019.
Last week, Cheese announced plans to help immigrants, particularly those from Asian nations, open a bank account without a Social Security card. The mobile app’s new feature was added after Cheese launched earlier this year with a cash-back rewards program for those wanting to build credit.
To help with alternative forms of identification — such as a visa and a passport, and a valid U.S. address — Cheese partnered with Everett, Wash.-based Coastal Community Bank.
Lian found a secure way to upload the required documents via the app, much like depositing a check on a cell phone.
Cheese’s platform provides a debit Mastercard issued by Coastal Community Bank, which is available to people with no credit history.
Over the past year, Cheese has raised a total of $3.6 million in seed funding from investors.
