Juno

Juno is a financial technology company that offers a neobanking platform. Its programs feature cash back options with retailers such as Amazon, Target, and Walmart, subscription management functionality, integrations with popular payment apps like Venmo, and contactless payment through its Instant Virtual Card.

Since the company is not a bank, banking services are provided by Evolve Bank and Trust, Members FDIC. The Juno card is issued by Evolve Bank and Trust, Member FDIC, pursuant to license by Mastercard International. Juno was founded in July 2019 by Varun Deshpande, Ratnesh Ray, and Siddharth Verma, the creators of the Consensys-backed Nuo protocol in 2018. The trio had earlier founded BeeWise, an alternate credit analytics platform acquired in 2017 by Aditya Birla Money.

On October 9, 2019, Juno raised a seed round of USD $3 million from Sequoia Capital's Surge Program, Polychain Capital and Dragonfly Capital Partners. The round also saw participation from Consensys Labs, Astarc Ventures, Singapore Angel Network and angels including Balaji S. Srinivasan (Ex-CTO, Coinbase and General Partner, a16z), Salil Deshpande (ex-MD, Bain Capital Ventures), Amrish Rau and Jitendra Gupta (CEO & MD, PayU India), Nitin Sharma from Incrypt, Venu Palaparthi (CCO, Dash Financial), Rajesh Chelapurath (President, Ceera Investments), Brian Ma (Founder, Divvy Homes), Sanjay Mehta from Mehta Ventures, Prashant Malik (Creator of Apache Cassandra).

Varun Deshpande, co-founder of Juno, stated

We are excited to unveil Juno - a neo banking platform that provides a high yield checking account to save more. Our mission with OnJuno is to help create an open financial system for the world by providing equal opportunity and access, no matter where you are born or how much you earn. We are also delighted to partner with Polychain Capital, Sequoia Capital’s Surge Program and Dragonfly Capital on this journey as we build a new age banking platform from the ground up.

Users can get paid in crypto with direct deposit. They can do that by setting up a direct deposit and receiving part of their cash paycheck in crypto in any wallet of their choice. Some employees at Apple, Google, Amazon, Messari, Polygon, Uber, Polychain, Microsoft, KPMG, and Twitter use Juno to take their paycheck in cryptocurrency. The process includes the following steps::

• Pick Currencies: Enter amount and choose between BTC, ETH, USDC or other currencies

• Set Up Direct Deposit: Switch part of paycheck automatically by logging into payroll provider

• Select Wallet: Select receiving address as Juno Wallet or any external wallet

On November 24, 2021, Juno teamed up with Argent to enable users get paid in Ethereum. Users create create an OnJuno account, connect to their payroll through the platform's automated service, then select Argent as the preferred wallet. The service is for US residents only and the company plans to expand globally in 2022.