Lurein Perera On Building Financial Infrastructure And Technology For Social Impact

Lurein Perera is the founder and CEO of GiveCard. He conceived the idea for GiveCard as a sophomore at Boston College in 2018, driven by a desire to make it easier for people to help those experiencing homelessness in an increasingly cashless world.

Lurein led the development of GiveCard from a student project into a full-fledged nonprofit, and later, a mission-driven technology company serving multiple organisations.

His experience navigating the complexities of launching a fintech platform for social good has made him a subject matter expert in the growing guaranteed income and direct cash assistance movement. Lurein holds a degree in Economics and Computer Science from Boston College.

Lurein discusses aligning innovative financial technologies with a vision for systems change, democratising access to payment infrastructure, and building a sustainable social enterprise model that scales impact-driven solutions for underserved communities.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - To start off, can you please share a bit about your background and what led you to becoming a social entrepreneur working on financial inclusion?

[Lurein Perera] - I grew up in Malawi, in Southeast Africa. Malawi is a very special place. Was there anything about Malawi that particularly drove me to do exactly what I’m doing? I really can’t say—I'm sure it’s one of those things that just seeped into me naturally.

Malawi is often called the “Warm Heart of Africa.” People are extremely friendly, and there’s a strong sense of interpersonal care in society.

When I came to the US, I didn’t arrive with the goal of becoming an entrepreneur. I was trying to become a computer science engineer at a big company. At one point, my dream was to work at Microsoft or somewhere similar. I never quite got there—and I don’t think I ever will now.

GiveCard came out of acting. I saw something I wanted to fix, spoke to a few people, and got really excited about the idea that maybe we could do something about this problem. That was about seven, almost eight years ago now.

I still don’t love the term entrepreneur; it feels a bit strange to me. But it’s one of those things where we saw something, thought, “Oh my God, we really want to do this,” and now we’ve been doing it for close to a decade. I suppose that’s just become our identity now.

As the CEO and co-founder of GiveCard, can you share more about the organisation and how it’s transforming financial access for vulnerable communities?

The GiveCard of today—and I imagine we’ll get into the GiveCard of yesterday later in this conversation, so we’ll save that as a little teaser—is essentially what I’d call magical money movement infrastructure. But how does that create social impact?

Well, the majority of where we deploy this infrastructure is in emergency relief, social assistance, cash disbursement, and domestic violence prevention.What we discovered is that most of the ways money is distributed to people across society are based on legacy systems—tools built by companies 20 or more years ago.

These systems rely on outdated pricing models that pass fees onto consumers and burdensome administration that leaves organisations manually processing everything.

Take emergency relief, for example. When a hurricane strikes a region, organisations are often left manually writing and mailing out 10,000 cheques to the last known addresses of affected individuals, with no way of knowing whether those people are still there, or if they’ll be able to cash the cheque.

For those without a bank account or access to free cheque cashing, they’re hit with a 10% fee just to access the money. It’s not just cheques either. Many people are handed store-bought gift cards. And while gift cards can be useful, if your house just burned down in a fire, what are you going to do with $500 to spend at Target? You can do some things, sure—but unrestricted cash is far more valuable.

Over the past seven years, GiveCard has evolved significantly, but the last three years have been our strongest yet—growth has surged more than a thousandfold. During that time, our focus has been on building best-in-class infrastructure.

But unlike others in the space who build for banks, fintechs, or trendy new start-ups, we’re building for social impact organisations first. We’re building for homeless shelters, for local and federal governments, and for domestic violence prevention programs. These are the organisations that usually get access to advanced tools 15 years after everyone else. We’re flipping that by giving them access first.

Now, yes—we do have airlines and Series A fintechs using GiveCard, but they aren’t who we built it for. It’s just that we’ve created infrastructure so good that it benefits everyone. But our purpose, our design, and our mission are all centred around empowering the organisations that are traditionally overlooked. And that’s been really exciting to see.

The primary way GiveCard operates—and you can probably guess it from the name—is through cards. We’ve developed reloadable cards that don’t require identification or a fixed address.

Back when I was first trying to start GiveCard, if we wanted to give someone experiencing homelessness a $100 card, we essentially had to get them a debit card.

That meant banking them through an institution like Bank of America and figuring out how to load money into their account. But without a fixed address or a Social Security number, it’s impossible to access those kinds of services.

Alternatively, I could buy a store-bought prepaid card—like a Visa gift card—and load it manually. Visa is a great company, and we actually work with them, but those store-bought cards come with limitations.

Once I hand that card to someone, I have no way of knowing whether they were able to use the money. If the card gets lost or stolen, the money is gone. There’s no protection—it’s essentially just cash on a card.

What we set out to do with GiveCard was build real infrastructure onto a card. We’re not treating it like a novelty gift card—we’re treating it like a bank replacement. So we built our own system where I can issue someone a reloadable card. I don’t have to hand them 10 different cards across 10 months. Instead, that one card can be continuously reloaded.

We can also apply high-level restrictions when needed. Most of our customers don’t require that, but for example, a government department might request that funds can only be used for groceries.

That’s a setting we can configure, and it often encourages donors to give more, knowing the funds are being used for specific needs. As long as the communication is clear and the recipient is informed and comfortable, it works really well.

On top of that, we’ve built in multiple automation layers. If a nonprofit has 10,000 people listed in their Salesforce database who are affected by a disaster like a hurricane, we can automatically pull that data, ship cards to those individuals, and load each card with a specified amount—say, $200 a month—on a recurring basis. Everything happens seamlessly.

One of my favourite GiveCard stories involves a city government department that runs a benefits program specifically for mothers who have recently transitioned out of homelessness. It’s a very targeted initiative.

The team running this program was incredibly overworked—they barely had time for anything. Scheduling a meeting with them would take at least a month because they were so overwhelmed just keeping one program going.

After they integrated GiveCard and set up automations, everything changed. On the first of every month, the cards are automatically loaded. If someone loses their card, they can call GiveCard support. We have a trauma-informed, 24/7 multilingual support team trained to assist people in emergency situations.

Our team handles the issue entirely. The government staff no longer have to deal with those emergencies—we’ve got detailed playbooks to manage lost cards, block them to prevent misuse, and replace them efficiently.

It got so seamless that one day, the city administrator emailed me saying, “Hey Lurein, is there any way we could make the GiveCard admin dashboard work on my phone?” I said, “Sure, we can. But I’m curious—why would you need that for financial reporting?” She replied, “Because we’ve saved so much time using GiveCard, we don’t work Fridays anymore. I just want to check reports from the beach.” I thought that was pretty cool.

The point is, we transformed a department that previously had no breathing room into one that could operate from a phone, at the beach. We’re not replacing jobs—we’re making people 10 to 15 times more capable. As a result, they can serve significantly more people. That’s been a really rewarding outcome to witness.

GiveCard started initially as a nonprofit, but then transitioned into a scalable social enterprise model. What inspired that shift, and what lessons did you learn from the process of moving from a nonprofit to a social enterprise?

Nonprofits play a critical role in society—they’re absolutely essential. So when we made the decision to transition away from being a nonprofit, I always stress that this wasn’t because we believed nonprofits weren’t effective.

In fact, I often get asked, “I’m thinking of launching a nonprofit—should I just start a for-profit instead?” And my answer is usually, “No, this should be a nonprofit.” If I were to start GiveCard again, I would still launch it as a nonprofit. I wouldn’t change a thing because that beginning allowed us to learn so much about the people we serve and how we operate.

When we launched GiveCard in 2018, direct cash assistance was known, but it wasn’t something society at large felt comfortable with. Pre-COVID, it was still considered a bit radical. So, as a nonprofit, we were carving out a very innovative space—we were championing a model of giving that wasn’t yet widely embraced.

Our early mission was very focused: we wanted to find better ways to get money directly into the hands of people experiencing homelessness. That original idea came from a personal moment. I’d met someone who was homeless—we had a great 15-minute conversation while I was on my way to catch a train.

At the end, he told me he needed a new winter coat and asked if I could help. I reached for my wallet but didn’t have any cash on me. I told him, “Sorry, I don’t have any,” and he replied, “Don’t worry, it happens all the time.”

That moment stuck with me. I got back to college and said to my roommates, “That’s wild. I had money to give, not much, but $20, and I couldn’t do anything simply because I didn’t have cash.” That sparked the initial insight behind GiveCard.

As a nonprofit, our mission was still focused on homelessness, but we were also trying to shift perceptions—to promote direct cash assistance and bring attention to the inefficiencies in traditional giving. At the time, it wasn’t a popular stance, but it’s what helped us define our purpose and ultimately grow into what we are today.

The nonprofit was still very focused on homelessness, but what we were really doing was exploring and building new, effective routes for putting money directly into the hands of people experiencing homelessness. We were promoting a shift—not just in tools, but in mindset. We were advocating for a technological transformation, and we were pushing direct cash assistance, which at the time wasn’t very popular.

Andrew Yang had run on a platform promoting universal basic income—which I think was amazing, and I’ve actually had the chance to meet him a few times—but back then, it wasn’t a widely supported idea. In fact, people were often calling direct cash assistance “un-American.”

Ironically, I think it’s actually a very American idea, but it was still being marginalised in public discourse. We knew we had a space in that conversation—our voice deserved to be heard.

Then COVID happened. Part of what prompted our shift away from the nonprofit model was that I’m not a particularly strong fundraiser. I don’t know what it is about me—maybe whatever it is that makes capitalists love me is exactly what makes nonprofit donors wary. But either way, we didn’t raise much funding as a nonprofit.

During the pandemic, when people began receiving stimulus cheques, everything changed. Suddenly, direct cash assistance wasn’t this strange, risky idea—it was mainstream. People started saying, “This wasn’t so bad. I got the cheque and used it to pay off debt,” or “I put it towards my kids’ college fund.” All these stories emerged about how people used their stimulus payments responsibly, and public sentiment started shifting.

At the same time, organisations that traditionally delivered in-person services had to pivot. A soup kitchen, for instance, couldn’t legally host public gatherings due to mask mandates.

So what did they do? They went to the ATM, withdrew cash, and gave out $10 or $20 to each person at the door, saying, “Go buy yourself a meal.” This kind of transition happened everywhere, globally.

By late 2020, it was clear COVID would last at least another year. Many organisations had made a pivotal shift from providing services to offering services plus cash, or just cash alone. At that point, GiveCard was no longer the lone voice advocating for direct cash assistance. There were many voices now.

But what still set us apart was our focus on the technology—on moving away from paper cash, which offers no transparency, no auditability, and comes with a high risk of theft for both the organisation and the recipient.

Cash, in its traditional form, is insecure and non-transparent. You don’t know where it’s going or how much of it reaches the intended recipient. That got us thinking—maybe instead of focusing on fundraising ourselves, GiveCard as a nonprofit could instead partner with organisations that are already great at fundraising, and we would focus on powering the technology shift.

We sat in that in-between space for about a year, debating whether to stick with the nonprofit model or make the jump. What we kept hearing from nearly everyone—whether we liked their advice or not—was, “This is a fantastic infrastructure idea, but why is it a nonprofit? Why would a donor give you $100,000 to rebuild financial infrastructure when they could give that same amount to an organisation like Mary’s Meals and feed thousands of children?”

It was a valid point and made us seriously question whether infrastructure development should be something funded through donations. At that time, we just weren’t seeing a lot of fundraising success with the nonprofit approach.

What finally pushed us to make the leap was our experience with Y Combinator, the well-known startup accelerator. We had applied to the program as a nonprofit and got accepted. But their pitch was, “We’ll take you—but you should be a for-profit.” For a variety of reasons, we decided not to join the program, and to their credit, Y Combinator was very understanding. But we took their advice to heart.

That night, my co-founder Diksha and I had both finished reading the same book, Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers—one of those late-night moments of clarity. Around 3 a.m., I sent an email to a group of advisors I’d met throughout college, letting them know we were planning to shut down the nonprofit and relaunch GiveCard as a for-profit social enterprise with the exact same mission: building the infrastructure to get money into people’s hands.

By 7 a.m., one of them called me and said, “I’ll give you $100,000 if you make this a for-profit company.” That first call triggered a wave of support. Within a week, we had millions of dollars committed from investors who believed in our mission—just as they had when we were a nonprofit—but now backed it as a venture-supported company, enabling us to scale infrastructure at speed.

Our mission right now is simple: we’re building the best financial infrastructure for putting money into people’s hands. That’s the goal—to move a trillion dollars from organisations directly to individuals. No fees for the end user, no bloated admin processes—just a seamless, magical experience.

Honestly, if you haven’t seen our website branding, go check it out at givecard.com. Don’t worry about signing up or using the product—just take a look. I know I’m tooting my own horn here, but it’s some of the coolest branding out there! We wanted to capture that feeling—that giving money to someone in need can, and should, feel magical. And we hope that sentiment becomes the norm.

Why is financial inclusion such an important component of creating systemic social impact? And what role do innovative financial tools like GiveCard play in addressing this problem?

I don’t remember the exact number—which is a little embarrassing—but I believe around 26 million Americans are completely unbanked, and an even greater number are underbanked. I want to say it's about 60 million, but don’t quote me on that—I definitely need to brush up on the latest stats. Either way, it’s a staggering figure.

The reason is that banking was never built for everyone. It was originally designed for people with significant wealth—people who needed a secure place to store large sums of money.

Over time, banks saw an opportunity to make money from more people and started expanding their offerings. But even then, the system remained a kind of trickle-down structure. It wasn’t created with inclusivity in mind.

Now we’re seeing the rise of neobanks, especially in Europe, which offer zero-fee accounts or similar features. But there are still issues—overdraft fees, hidden charges, and unnecessary barriers that make it difficult for many people to open or maintain an account. There’s also a lack of trust. People know banks fail. They know the system hasn’t historically been built for them, and they’re wary of getting burned.

That’s where GiveCard comes in. We’re not necessarily replacing banking—at least not yet—but we are rethinking how money moves. Most financial tools were designed for high-net-worth individuals and large corporations. We’re taking those same capabilities and making them accessible to everyone.

It’s absurd that I can deposit a cheque into my Bank of America account without fees—maybe it’s a dollar, maybe it’s free—but someone with less income might have to pay $10 or $15 to do the same thing. And they need that money far more than I do. That kind of inequity highlights just how backward the system is. We should have built it from the bottom up.

What it all comes down to is that the system was built backwards. The people who could afford the fees weren’t the ones paying them, and those who couldn’t afford them were.

It makes sense historically—banks were built for people who already had money, and the infrastructure grew from there. But now we’re in a different place. The average American has some level of net worth. It’s not zero. There’s no reason we can’t provide quality financial services to everyone. We’re just choosing not to.

At GiveCard, our aim is to level the playing field. We want to make it easy for anyone to receive money—simply, securely, and without unnecessary friction. What we’re all about is putting money in people’s hands and trusting them to use it wisely. That’s been the core ethos we’ve carried from our roots in the direct cash movement: when you give money to someone who needs it, they usually know exactly what to do with it.

We see this all the time. Hundreds of nonprofits and government agencies use GiveCard to distribute funds. While we can’t share data directly, many of these organisations send us impact reports, and the vast majority of funds are spent on emergency needs. It’s striking how small the difference can be.

Back in college, when we were just getting started with GiveCard, Boston College gave us a year-long course to work on it. We didn’t have to take two traditional classes—they let us focus fully on the project and gave us access to researchers and policy experts.

One of the findings that stood out was that the difference between someone who is low-income and housed, versus low-income and unhoused, was just $200. That’s it. Controlling for everything else—mental health, addiction, general wellbeing—it was a matter of $200.

That insight stuck with us. It was powerful to think: if we can create a system where that $200 can easily reach the people who need it, how different could society look? Now that GiveCard has scaled, we’re starting to see it in action. Our cards are being swiped every second—it’s incredibly rewarding to witness.

Do you have any advice for social entrepreneurs on how to balance mission and purpose with financial sustainability, while running a business that can generate long-term impact and stay true to its original vision?

This isn’t my original phrase, but you have to start with why. Begin by asking yourself why you’re doing it. After nearly a decade of GiveCard, I can tell you we would have given up a long time ago if we didn’t deeply care about what we were building. It hasn’t been an easy journey. Even in our three best years, we’ve faced significant challenges.

You have to be genuinely committed to the mission. I would never recommend starting with “this could be financially viable, so let’s just do it and find a mission later.” It has to be the other way around. Pick something that matters to you. Make sure it’s a cause you believe in, something where you feel you can truly make a difference.

Ask yourself: “Would I want to work on this for seven years?” If you’re 28, would you still want to be doing this at 35? You don’t need to have all the answers, but do that gut check. There are a lot of ideas that, when you really stop and reflect, you realise you wouldn't want to be committed to for that long.

That’s where sustainability comes in. Yes, think about it, but don’t lose sleep over it too early. Life is long. These timelines we set for ourselves—launching by graduation, scaling within two years—they’re arbitrary. The most important thing is whether you care enough to keep going. If you do, you’ll figure the rest out.

Honestly, timelines are arbitrary. Seven years, eight years—GiveCard has now been going much longer than we initially planned. Back in college, our timeline was tied to graduation. We thought, “We need to have this figured out by the time we graduate,” which gave us about two years. But here we are, five-plus years after graduating, and we’re still doing it. That original timeline turned out to be completely irrelevant.

What really matters is whether you care deeply about what you’re doing. Every time you come up against one of those artificial deadlines, just ask yourself: how can I buy a little more time? How can I keep working on this for one more year?

When my co-founder Diksha and I were graduating from Boston College, we messaged each other and asked, “What are we doing here?” At that point, we’d only distributed funds to 14 people. Our nonprofit had a total of around $20,000—barely enough to keep things afloat. It wasn’t a full-time job by any means. We were both staring into the unknown.

But we made a decision. We said, “Let’s just figure out how to do it for one more year.” I wish I could share that original message—it’s full of expletives, but it’s hilarious. The gist was: we’ll figure out the money, we’ll figure out how to live. Diksha moved back home, we split a modest salary, and I worked elsewhere to keep us going.

That one extra year led to four or five more. And that’s really the secret. If you care about what you’re doing, just figure out how to keep it going. The financial sustainability part? You’ll sort it out. You’re smart enough. It’s not that hard—as long as you care.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently that are creating positive change?

Mary’s Meals is my favourite nonprofit in the world. I think they’re absolutely incredible. They’re currently feeding around two million children every day—nearly one million of those in Malawi, which is where I grew up, so it feels really personal to me.

I just think their model is brilliant: it’s low overhead, high impact, deeply community-based, and supported by strong local buy-in. They’re incredibly thoughtful in how they operate. If I had $100 million to give away, I’d donate all of it to Mary’s Meals. That’s how much I believe in what they do.

Another organisation I deeply admire is GiveDirectly. They’re the pioneers of cash giving on a global scale. We’re actually working with them right now on the LA fire relief program—payments are going out this month, which is really exciting.

Their model is powerful: they simply give people cash, change lives, and are helping to reinvent entire systems. I’m honoured that GiveCard plays a role in how they distribute those payments.

Then there’s Breaktime, a really cool nonprofit based in Boston. I’d definitely recommend looking into them. They also use GiveCard for their payments, but beyond that, what Connor and the team are doing is amazing.

They just bought a building—an actual office building—in downtown Boston. And this is a nonprofit, run by a young founder without massive financial backing, making big, bold moves for their mission. I think that’s just awesome.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our audience?

One book I always recommend is Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers. It’s perfect for those moments when you’re trying to decide whether to go all-in on something or walk away. I actually suggest reading it when you’re not at a major crossroads, and then coming back to it whenever you are. It’s a collection of thoughts on how to make meaningful decisions, all rooted in the question: “Is this a hell yeah, or is it a no?”

Each page is available online for free, and you can purchase a physical copy for a small amount. It’s incredible. I give it to all of our employees. I think I have about 20 copies in the office right now. Whenever someone tells me they’re facing a tough decision, I hand them a copy—it’s become a bit of a ritual.

My favourite book of last year, though, was The Humans by Matt Haig. Just read it. I’ll be honest—the first half is weird. It’s cheesy, cringey, and you’ll probably wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into. But stick with it. By the end, it becomes something really profound.

It makes you reflect on life, on what it means to be human, and why that’s something special. My girlfriend read it recently and got three-quarters of the way through before saying, “What is this book?” I told her to just finish it—and she did. And she got it. So, yes, highly recommend.