MN Mobile Banking Co. Aims To Raise $20M

Cachet Financial Solutions, a mobile banking technology company based in Minneapolis, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday to raise up to $20 million in a public offering.
 
The company specializes in “remote deposit capture” technology for personal banking, which allows users to send images of their checks to banks for depositing. Cachet also recently acquired a mobile payment app technology platform from Texas-based DeviceFidelity.
 
For the public offering, the company didn’t list the amount of shares offered or a price for the shares.
 
Cachet is led by Jeff Mack, who has seen varying success as the CEO and founder of a variety of Minnesota-based companies. Mack may be most well known for founding Bloomington-based auto-finance company Arcadia Financial (formally known as Olympic Financial) in January 1990. Mack successfully grew the company until 1996, when Arcadia received interest from an outsider to buy the company. Amid discussions of a possible sale, Mack was terminated due to what the company said were “philosophical differences.”
 
Although the original deal that led to Mack’s termination fell through, Arcadia was eventually purchased by a Dallas-based company in 1999 for $200 million.
 
After being ousted from Arcadia, Mack went on to start a new business in October 1997 called Emerald First Financial (later known as Freedom Nation), which lent money for recreational vehicles. According to the Star Tribune, the company shut down in 2000 after burning through $14.5 million in capital without attracting new investors. The failure led to lawsuits from investors and resulted in Mack filing for bankruptcy in 2001.
 
From January 2003 to September 2008 Mack served as CEO and president of Minnetonka-based digital marketing technology firm Wireless Ronin Technologies, Inc., which recently merged with a Utah firm.
 
Mack then served as a consultant to small businesses until 2010, when he founded Cachet. Cachet became a public company through a reverse merger when it acquired a shell company called DE Acquisition in February.
 
For the first quarter, which ended March 31, Cachet reported a net loss of $2.87 million, or $0.47 per share, compared to a net loss of $6.15 million, or $2.42 per share, during the same period in 2013.
 
Revenue, meanwhile, totaled $476,500, up 145 percent from $194,200 in the first quarter of 2013.