Joust, an Austin-based banking company, announced this week it will offer advances on unpaid invoices for individuals impacted by last Friday’s cancellation of the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival due to the coronavirus outbreak.
SXSW is Austin’s second largest annual event and had a total economic impact of almost $360 million last year, according to a report commissioned by the festival. The event influences nearly every industry, from media to hotels to food trucks. Hundreds of companies, many of them small businesses, will likely take an economic hit because of the cancellation. Joust wants to help with that.
“The folks who are impacted the most are, in fact, our customers,” co-founder CEO Lamine Zarrad told Built In. “We’re in a unique position to help them because our product is designed for, specifically, this kind of a dilemma.”
Joust is specifically targeted to independent professionals including small business owners, freelancers and contractors. The mobile app gives users an FDIC-insured business bank account, a merchant account that accepts virtually all credit cards and an invoicing tool that lets them bill and get direct payments. Joust says it can guarantee its users get paid and that there are no transfer fees when they do.
Zarrad says Joust’s PayArmour tool will help those who have already done some work but won’t get paid, as well as those who stood to make money at SXSW but never got the chance. All they have to do is open a Joust account, create an invoice, prove it is valid and choose a payday. Same-day payment comes with a flat 6 percent invoice fee, and a net-30 payment guarantee has a 1 percent fee. In addition, the company is also waiving processing fees for impacted users of its business banking account with the code “JOUST4ATX.”
Joust, which is also a finalist in the 2020 SXSW Innovation Awards, was originally founded in Denver but moved to Austin last year. Zarrad says that, when he and his colleagues found out the event was canceled, they knew they could help.
“We want to be a part of the community. It’s incredibly important to us to be embedded in this vibrant community of startups, entrepreneurs and creatives,” Zarrad said. “We just felt compelled to help out our neighbors.”
