Mezu Lets People Give And Get Money Without Sharing Any Personal Information

CLEVELAND, Ohio – If you’ve ever been stuck without cash, you know the feeling. You want to tip your bartender or valet, give a little something extra to the hair stylist or buy concert tickets. You don’t know them well, so you don’t want to use a peer-to-peer payment app where you have to share your personal information—phone number, email, username. It’s a problem that more people encounter as we move toward a cashless economy—a world where cash is less accepted while credit cards and digital payments take over.

Mezu is a first-of-its-kind money app built to address two gaps in the mobile payment space: How do you pay someone you do not know when you don’t have cash? And how do you protect your privacy and financial activity in our overexposed, over-hacked social age?

The app solves these privacy and inconvenience challenges by generating a unique, one-time encrypted code that allows anyone to exchange money instantly without sharing any personal information. This means that with Mezu, you can pay people you know and those you don’t.

The Mezu app is free and available now in the App Store and the Google Play Store. Other benefits include:

• Your financial information is always treated as private, personal information: Your personal and financial information isn’t shared in any way between users or published within any social feed so it’s not viewed or accessible to others. You can give and get money with people you know and people you don’t know and your activity remains 100 percent private and discreet.
• The ease of cash with the convenience of always having it when you need it: Never be short on cash for a tip again or waste time searching for an ATM.
• Confidence that your money is insured: Mezu offers an FDIC-insured account for every user through its banking partners, MainStreet Bank, so you know that your money is safe.
• Data is secure and compliant: All transaction information in the app is encrypted and safe.

“Too many companies are still playing fast and loose with people’s personal data—nowhere is this more serious than with our financial information,” said Yuval Brisker, co-founder and CEO of Mezu, Inc. “Mezu was founded to ensure everyone’s right to confidentiality and privacy in digital payments. We believe that what you do with your money is your business, and we’ve built a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use app to deliver on that promise.”

Mezu is the only mobile payment app that puts privacy first, which squarely addresses issues such as:

• Women’s safety: Currently, mobile payment apps are often used to facilitate digital stalking—if a woman pays someone she doesn’t know with an app, that person can then search, find and connect to her on her personal social networks. Mezu separates personal information from social networks.
• Serving the underserved: According to the FDIC1, more than 23 million Americans do not have a bank account at a federally insured institution—which means they face many challenges when paying someone or getting paid. Mezu will allow people to get paid and securely store money in an FDIC-insured account.

Surprisingly, cash is still the most widely used payment instrument in the world. According to 2018 data2, 75 percent of countries report that cash is used in more than 50 percent of all transactions. Cash also has increased in demand, having increased 9.6 percent relative to GDP, up from 8.1 percent in 2011. Mezu’s vision is to make digital cash ubiquitous and accessible for everyone, everywhere.

Mezu recently closed a $10 million Series A round led by Draper Triangle Ventures with JumpStart Inc., Draper Associates, the Ohio Innovation Fund, North Coast Angel Fund and private investors.

Mezu was founded by Yuval Brisker and Pedro Silva, technologists and serial entrepreneurs. Brisker was previously co-founder and CEO of TOA Technologies, which was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2014, in one of the largest venture capital-backed exits in Ohio’s history.

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