Going Live: An Inside Look

Bits of Stock is an all-in-one investing platform. Our technology allows businesses and organizations to offer their customers rewards in fractional shares of companies along with other investing capabilities like roundups and fractional trading.

We had a long road to get here, but here is our experience going live with our first institutional partner last year:

OMB bank was one of our first partnerships which meant a lot to us as a startup with a mission to make investing more accessible for all. The longtime anticipation and effort that went into us going live made this even more significant to us as a company.

The Bits of Stock collaboration with OMB Bank has the perfect synergies for a complementary partnership. OMB Bank is a fast-growing and well-respected community bank with $1.4 billion in total assets, providing the perfect client to go live with first.

Integration

Bits of Stock is now integrated with OMB Bank's internal systems through Banno technologies offerings. This was an exciting process as our engineering team got to design an interface that was just right for OMB’s checking account offering.

The results of this integration are exciting for account holders. Now investing in the stock market is a rewarding experience with an easy and fun interface they can interact with.

Bits of Stock capabilities enhance the investing experience for account holders who typically may not have exposure to investing products. It limits the downsides that create barriers to entry for beginner investors by replacing a cash-back structure with fractional shares that have the potential to grow.

Going Live

Going live with our first partner was a cross-functional effort for the entire Bits of Stock operation. It was an especially large lift for the engineering team who worked countless hours building the product.

Here are three main takeaways from, the Bits of Stock Senior Front End engineer, Gyorgy Kramarics:

1. The requirement for modularity and exact alignment with the external system's design added additional layers of difficulty that made the project exciting but challenging.

2. A well-designed system made it possible to react quickly to unexpected scenarios, reinforcing that preparedness and adaptability are vital in complex integration projects.

3. The integration process allowed us to comprehend how our product can be tailored to benefit community banks' clients specifically, and how it can contribute to the general framework of community banking. This partnership is more than a business expansion, it's an educational experience that shapes our understanding of the market and guides our future strategies.

Now that we are live with our first partner, we can start the refining process of our journey as a company. 

We want to take this experience and polish it. 

Make it better and better.

There is a huge opportunity to come out of this initial going live and make a standardized and repeatable integration process that is scrappy and scalable. The future is looking bright and full of opportunities to continue to expand to new partnerships in the Financial space.

Final Thoughts

This was a huge milestone for the Bits of Stock team. We have come so far as an organization to get to this point.

At the end of the day, it is a win for the account holder who now has the opportunity to experience the power of compounding in their financial portfolio. 

Before, a product like this was not an option. Now doors are opening and we plan to continue to open more down the road.