Fintech One-On-One Fintech Revealed: Earned Wage Access with Clair and Gusto
Apr 21, 2025
41:09
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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- Connect with me on LinkedIn
- Find previous Fintech One-on-One episodes