This Navy veteran wants to make it easier to lend money to family

Sun, May 18, 2025, 11:15 AM 3 min read

Listen and subscribe to Warrior Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Sometimes the best way to build a successful business is to see where a company can make the biggest impact.

This was Navy veteran Dennis Cail’s philosophy when founding Zirtue, a money lending company that allows friends and family to lend money to each other with a better guarantee they’ll get paid back. As Cail explained, the company’s use of digital promissory notes creates a paper trail and sets up payment plans to ensure that money is paid back, eliminating the need for unfulfilled Venmo requests and payday loans with high interest rates.

Cail credits his trajectory to the education he received at Southern Methodist University in Texas after four years in the Navy. Though the military was a foundational part of his experience, he said on Yahoo Finance’s Warrior Money podcast that it was his education — partially paid for with the GI bill — that aided his journey as an entrepreneur.

“It's one thing to have the military experience, which gave me a lot of discipline, a lot of focus that I didn't have before,” he said. “Once I got the education, that just opened my mind to all the opportunities and possibilities that were out there. And I started trying to use my God-given talents and skills to figure out how I can be helpful.”

Now, Zirtue operates on the same principles by listening to consumers and trying to find solutions to their problems.

“Our whole mission is to drive financial equity and inclusion one relationship at a time, and we do that by simplifying loans between friends and family,” Cail explained. “We have this whole model that we call partnership with purpose. So, OK, we're not going to force you to get a bank account. Maybe we can put you in a position where you can get the money you need to pay the bills you need now, and then graduate you into traditional bank accounts and credit products that work for you. But let's meet you where you are today.”

Zirtue’s efforts to meet customers where they are, including a partnership with MoneyGram that allows the 5.6 million Americans who don’t have a bank account to use the service, have presented new opportunities for the company to grow and for customers to begin to get on their feet financially.

The company has also expanded to offer a similar payment plan service to small businesses looking to get unfulfilled invoices paid — thereby helping many of them stay solvent.

"We are basically allowing those companies to set payment terms with companies and consumers that owe them money versus writing those funds off," Cail explained. "And it essentially allows them to allow those vendors and or customers to pay over time, but at least they get to capture that as revenue versus writing it off."