Fintech Revealed: Earned Wage Access with Clair and Gusto

Fintech One•On•One

Welcome back to the occasional series on the podcast called Fintech Revealed. This is a sponsored show where we take a deep dive on one topic with a couple of industry experts.

Today, we have Nico Simko, CEO and Co-Founder of Clair and Dan Loomis, the General Manager and Head of Product for the Money Group at Gusto. The topic we are doing a deep dive in today is Earned Wage Access (EWA) - one of my favorite fintech innovations of the last decade. We cover a great deal of territory on this show as we delve into embedded finance and the evolution of EWA (for reference I interviewed Nico on the show last year).

In this podcast you will learn:

• Why Clair focuses on being embedded with HR and payroll companies instead of going direct to consumer or direct to employers.
• What piqued the interest of Gusto to offer EWA.
• What was involved in getting Clair up and running at Gusto.
• The two pieces that had to be in place at Clair to be able to embed their tech at Gusto.
• What employees are using EWA for at Gusto.
• How EWA is presented to employees in the Gusto app.
• How Clair worked with Gusto to determine how exactly to integrate EWA into their wallet.
• How the roll out has been going.
• What Gusto users are telling them about EWA.
• How fast a user can get money to their card if they have never used EWA before.
• Why Clair took the regulatory approach of treating EWA as a loan.
• What resistance, if any, employers have to offering EWA.
• What is stopping more payroll companies from signing up for EWA.
• Some of the limitations of the direct to consumer EWA model.
• What it is going to take for EWA to become ubiquitous.

Connect with Fintech One-on-One:

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• Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes