Nico Simko, Founder & CEO of Clair on a different approach to earned wage access

Enjoying our podcasts? Don’t miss out on future episodes! Please hit that subscribe button on AppleSpotifyYouTube, or your favorite podcast platform to stay updated with our latest content. Thank you for your support!

Nico Simko, Founder & CEO of Clair on a different approach to earned wage accessNico Simko, Founder & CEO of Clair on a different approach to earned wage access
Nico Simko, Founder & CEO of Clair

I have made no secret of my affection for earned wage access (EWA) as a product. It has been growing rapidly, particularly the last couple of years, as more consumers realize what a great tool it is. There have been several different approaches to implementing EWA from the major players in the space but no one has approached it the same way as Clair.

My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Nico Simko, the CEO and Founder of Clair. While operating in a space without regulatory clarity, Clair has taken the most conservative approach. It also happens to be the approach with the most regulatory work to implement. It is somewhat controversial in EWA circles: considering these advances to be a loan.

In this podcast you will learn:

  • How Uber Money gave Nico the idea for the founding of Clair.
  • The wedge he built that differentiated Clair from the start.
  • How their product works from an employee experience.
  • How they are able to get the workforce management apps involved.
  • The maximum that employees are able to advance each pay period.
  • Clair’s approach towards the regulatory uncertainty in the EWA space.
  • Why they decided to create the legal structure to make their product a loan.
  • Nico’s thoughts on the EWA bill that is working through Congress right now.
  • Why they chose Pathward as their partner bank.
  • What it will look like in ten years time for workers’ access to their wages.
  • Some simple ideas that Nico is thinking about for better products for workers.
  • What Clair is focused on the next 12-18 months.

Read a transcription of our conversation below.

Peter Renton  00:01

Welcome to the Fintech One-on-One podcast. This is Peter Renton, Chairman and co-founder of Fintech Nexus. I’ve been doing this show since 2013, which makes this the longest running one-on-one interview show in all of fintech. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey.

Peter Renton  00:27

Today on the show, I’m delighted to welcome Nico Simko. He is the CEO and founder of Clair. Now, Clair is a super interesting company there in the earned wage access space. They’ve taken a little bit of a different approach to most others in the space. And so we dig into that difference in some depth. We obviously talk about how their product works, how they go to market, why they built their product the way they did. We talk extensively about regulation. And Nico provides his perspective on some of the state initiatives that around and also the federal as a bill working its way through Congress right now. And he gives his perspective on that. He talks about the bank partnership with Pathward, and much more. It was a fascinating discussion. Hope you enjoy the show.

Peter Renton  01:21

Welcome to the podcast. Nico.

Nico Simko  01:23

Thank you for having me, Peter.

Peter Renton  01:24

My pleasure. So let’s give the listeners a little bit of background about yourself. Tell us um, you know where you came from, how you came to be in this country, and what are some of the things you’ve done in your career to date?

Nico Simko  01:39

I’m Swiss, came over to the US for my studies. I was an undergrad at Harvard, economics tutor. So I was an hourly worker, it’s relevant for what I do today. So I was at J.P. Morgan after, while during college, I was fascinated with this cool application called Venmo, where you could pay your friends in a few seconds, ,and I was like, while interviewing I was, you know, pitching everybody that Venmo should be a thing in Europe. I had no idea that Venmo at the time was not making much money and pretty quickly had to sell, to first Braintree, and then Braintree made a lot of money selling that to PayPal as a whole. But I think that got the eyes open of J.P. Morgan. I joined, you know, I joined the investment banking division, but really talking a lot about payments and how I thought payments was cool. And I was probably the only you know, 21/22 year old that was like, payments is awesome. And it was at a time when you know fintech wasn’t really this big thing yet. You know, it was, there was some interest, but it was still pretty small.

Peter Renton  02:37

You’re at J.P. Morgan, and you suddenly, do you have an aha moment that leads to the founding of Clair? I mean, what was the sort of the genesis there?

Nico Simko  02:45

Yeah, there was one deal that I was working on at the time, which was related to payouts to consumers, a company that J.P. Morgan itself was looking to acquire. And then I started looking into the space. And there’s one particular product that was built, I think by Peter Hazlehurst at Uber, which is Uber Money. And Uber Money was a very simple idea. I mean, this has been probably repeated a few times, but I think I’m not the only person that was absolutely fascinated with what they had built, which was, can you pay drivers as soon as they finish a ride? And can you do it with the option of that being instant and free by giving them a debit card? And they had proven that that was working. And that for me was kind of a, it wasn’t even a question, it was like, it’s just a matter of time until small businesses, big businesses, medium sized businesses, in all industries, were going to offer the equivalent of that Uber Money experience, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Peter Renton  03:45

Right, right. Okay. Maybe you can explain, obviously, you’re going into a field that there are other players in this industry and are in this niche, shall we say. How did you sort of think about building your product? How did you differentiate your earned wage access product?

Nico Simko  04:02

Absolutely. So we’re absolutely not the first ones. And I repeated to the team, I repeated to investors, like, there were other people who thought, I think five or six years before us about earned wage access products like Even or DailyPay. I think Branch even started, you know, three or four years before us. I think they’re more focused on 1099 space. And at the time, I had all of these logos, you know, and names on a whiteboard. But at the same time, I was like, Why isn’t this ubiquitous? Why isn’t it that everywhere you walk in, right there is a button. As an employee, why didn’t I have that when I was in when I was in college, and I remember calling back my, you know, my place of employment and they were saying no, we don’t offer anything like this and many employers that I was talking to were like didn’t, weren’t really aware this was even offered. And a little bit doing research. I think that the segment that was really, really working were large businesses, and I think that makes a lot of sense, is that the good, I would say the V1 players in the space were going to very large businesses like Walmart, or some of the, you know, large hospital networks, and were just selling straight to them. And that was that was pretty successful. But the reality is, that’s probably will represent 5, 10% of US workforce. And I think that’s why you’re seeing, you’ve seen kind of the, the market share of EWA per employer, it’s still at around like, I don’t know exactly what the number is today, but it probably is around 10%. So it’s still like the vast majority, if not, almost all of the market is still pretty open. And so I asked myself why, and that’s where our edge came in. The why came, you know, the edge came in, where we realized that most payroll and workforce management systems had just gotten into the cloud a few years earlier. So you know, in the early 2010s, and it took them about five, you know, I would say, you know, between five to eight years to like, get to a point where like, these products really started gaining market share, and we’re still in the early innings is the reality, these things don’t go really fast. Because HR software does take a little bit to turn over, I think the the average RFP time is like seven years for business. And so what we, what I saw was that, hey, if I fast forward 10 years, the way EWA is going to live is it’s going to be living as a feature of workforce management and payroll, and employees can sign up on their own, but the employer should be taken out of the equation. And when I started understanding how others had built their products, all the others had built their product with the employer at the heart. So if you listened to any of their stories, it’s Let’s put the employer at the heart of this. And I think that this is an asset to some extent, when you talk to large employers, but it’s actually a liability if you’re trying to, like grow with, you know, businesses that are 200 employees and less, or even if you’re talking to employers that have 2000 employees, or 10,000 employees, but they don’t think about benefits all day long. And so the thing that we wanted to do was to partner with very tech advanced workforce management and payroll companies that saw this as a software that they needed to add on top of their solutions today.

Peter Renton  07:03

That’s interesting. So then, maybe you can explain exactly how your product works today. Like basically, from an employee perspective, you’ve got someone signed up, what are they? What do they experience?

Nico Simko  07:16

So in our product that’s been live for about two to three years, there’s a few more that are going to be released pretty soon. So I’ll talk about the basic one that all of our customers use today. The customer on average, will be, call it a hospital worker, they use a modern workforce management app. At some point, their scheduling app where they select their shifts is going to update and there’s going to be a button in the homescreen that says, Hey, Peter, you have worked six shifts in this new payroll cycle. So you know, you can advance $400 if you need to. And then what they do is they click that button, a widget opens inside the application. And there they open a bank account. And the whole idea for us was, let’s get as many people as we can to actually move their entire financial life to our digital bank. So then, on demand pay is a feature, but we’re actually making money off of card transactions. And so many, I would say 1000s and 1000s of employees across over 10,000 businesses have, not yet millions, but like 1000s and 1000s of employees have signed up for that. And then what we do is we generate revenue when they spend a portion of their paycheck on the card. And so for today, that’s, you know, over $1,000 per employee per month, and that just makes this a pretty good revenue stream.

Peter Renton  08:30

Right. Okay. So you had to embed Clair then in this workforce management app, right? So I’m just wondering how heavy a lift was it? What is it, to get those workforce management software to change what they’re doing to add this sort of button or link to Clair?

Nico Simko  08:52

It takes time to get alignment with all the stakeholders because this is not an add on benefit on our marketplace. This is a product decision that requires C suite investment, right. But once they make the decision, right, once a humans say this is strategically a good idea for us to do, the implementation’s not that long, right. You know, if you take in the case of TriNet, this was actually pretty fast. And then we’re at different entry points. And that’s the fun part also for them because product managers love getting involved with this. They like to, they like to play around with what wording are we going to use? Where’s the you know, the point of entry, and this becomes really a again, embedded finance discussion, and less of a Please redistribute my benefit on your platform.

Peter Renton  09:35

Right, right. Is this available for salaried workers as well as hourly?

Nico Simko  09:40

Yes.

Peter Renton  09:40

It is, okay, that’s good. That’s good. So then what are the limitations, or the protections shall we say, in place for consumers? Can you like, say you’re earning let’s just make it easy like $5,000 a month, and you get paid twice a month, what are the limitations? How much can you take out, and how often can you take money out?

Nico Simko  10:05

Yep. So it’s a little bit dependent on the integration we have, because we need to make sure that you know, the partner you’re with has the right integration, but the average will look like that it’s 50% of your estimated net pay. And you can take as many advances as you want, again, with our card program, they’re fully free. And you know, so they, you know, there’s in that program, there’s no fees associated with it. And the way we think about it for us is that if you put your direct deposit into our digital bank, we open a savings account for you. And we try to get you out of taking wage advances. That’s been kind of something we’ve really looked at. And so if you look at the average user, right, that signs up to put their direct deposit on the Clair account, they come for wage advances. So they took a bunch, but then a few weeks later, it starts diminishing, right. So they’ll like take less and less and less of them. And so, and the reason why I think many people do that is because they realize it’s there, they realize it’s instant. And then they see all sorts of savings accounts. So they’re starting to budget a little bit better. I think one of the big kind of question we’re asking ourselves right now is how can we replicate that in a world where people are not necessarily deciding to move their entire paycheck over to Clair? And so we don’t have that product yet, it’s not in market. But we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. But yeah, the social impact part of you know, people getting out of that needing less wage advances is in our data.

Peter Renton  11:24

Right, right. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So want to switch gears and talk about regulation, you can’t really talk about earned wage access these days, without talking about regulation, because there’s a lot of activity. I mean, you and I were on, I was moderating a panel with you and a senator from Nevada, who was one of the, was the first state to put in a regulatory framework around earned wage access. So tell us about your approach. When you kind of, you started this company, you would have seen the regulatory uncertainty and the different types of approaches, some of the other players in the space have undertaken. What was your approach towards regulatory uncertainty?

Nico Simko  12:06

It’s a great question, Peter, this is not easy. Before we talk about regulation, I’ll just say is like for consumers, and the service providers of the consumers that you know, need certain products, it’s hard enough to build these products, it’s practically impossible to build them with regulatory uncertainty. And so the number one thing that I think I want to strive for is like, and I think everybody agrees in the industry is, the more there’s clarity at the state and federal level around, what are these products, how do they fit within the regulatory schema, the easier it is for me to operate, it is easier to offer these products to consumers, the more these things can be all similar, the easier it is to build the products. And at the end of the day, it’s the consumer that wins right? Now, if you go back a little bit, when we started building this product around 2020, I would call up law firms. And I would say, hey, we want to build this product. And I would talk to experts in the field. And you know, we want to advance money based on this payroll and time and attendance data, and it will be indirectly distributed through the employer, right. And indirect means like through the HR tech system. And so we want to know, figure out how to do it. And we have interested parties to give us the money, but we want to make sure that you know the documents that the consumers are looking at, are pretty bulletproof. And the answer we got was, hey, if you want to do this bullet proof, there is no, you know, you should go down the lending route, because what you’re effectively doing is you’re advancing money to people with the expectation of getting paid back. And so when we looked at that, we realized this is not an easy path, and almost no one if maybe potentially, actually, no one has gone down that path. I don’t think anybody has. And so I was saying, Well, wait a minute, you’re telling me that, from your perspective, you’re an expert lawyer, and there’s multiple law firms, you know, that say that, you think that these things need to be loans? And I’m like, Yes, I was like, can you explain to me how everybody else operates? And I kind of didn’t get an answer. It was, you know, lawyers are very good at not giving you an answer, and I didn’t get an answer. And so it took a few weeks, I think, for us to kind of think about the topic. And we realized, okay, there’s maybe actually an opportunity here to differentiate ourselves in the market. If you ask me personally, whether, you know, I think this is a loan, or should not be a loan, the reality is, Peter, is I don’t know, because there’s, you know, politicians that need to decide that. But what I care about is having a product that I know can work in every constituency that I don’t need to like, you know, go and fight some legal battles, like because I want to be operating my business. And so we sit down with our VCs, we raise, we raise money, and we realized like, okay, there’s something we could do here, which is, since we’re early, is build a robust consumer lending program. So we went ahead, state by state, and got licenses required, and then we found a national bank that can lend nationwide, and then put them as the lender. I think that has kind of like shocked a little bit the space because everybody else is kind of going in the route of this is not a loan. And so my view is, we will adapt to whatever the legislation is, but right now we have a model that follows a, what I would say, very clear rules that are both distributed at the federal level, and that’s to the CFPB because of the Truth in Lending Act, as well, as you know, lending laws, which are state by state in this country.

Peter Renton  15:20

Was it Connecticut that came out and said that you, that these are loans? Can you operate? You can operate everywhere, is that correct?

Nico Simko  15:28

We can, we can operate everywhere, if we can’t operate in a state, it usually has nothing to do with whether this is a loan or not, is because, you know, maybe we’re a little early or we don’t have enough volume there that, you know, we have some disclosures that we haven’t produced. But yeah, we’ve just gone through this state by state, and we’re able to operate in all those states.

Peter Renton  15:46

It’s interesting one, because I mean, I’ve thought about this long and hard. And I’ve been a big proponent of earned wage access for probably seven or eight years now. And I feel like it should not be considered a loan, simply because this is money that is owed to you, in effect, you are loaning out the money to your employer. So in reality, it should be the other way around.

Nico Simko  16:09

No, exactly. It’s like, your argument is, because people who are paycheck to paycheck are literally lending to their employer, right? So you know, this thing, and I think that argument is right. Now, the issue, and this is the problem, sometimes a little bit with the speed of innovation compared to how laws catch up, is you can be caught doing something that technically, and this is I think what Connecticut is coming out with saying like, this doesn’t work, I understand your argument and all of that, but this is a form of credit. And therefore I need you to go and abide. Because if you take an EWA, and now it potentially opens up a loophole for bad actors, I don’t think you know, I look around the space, I don’t think like EWA providers are necessarily doing something bad. Quite the contrary, when we interview users, and they’ve used it, they’re usually very happy with the product. But what happens is it will elicit, you know, some bad behavior. And so I think Connecticut is trying to protect their constituency of like being on the debt reign, so they’re like, Okay, let’s go back to what we know, which is this really complex legal framework around lending and please fit with that. So on the base case, I fully agree. I think there’s just some scary part for lawmakers around making exceptions for EWA.

Peter Renton  17:22

Right, yeah. So with that in mind, you know, there is federal legislation, which is what surprised me when it came out. I’ll link to it in the show notes. But it’s H.R.7428 – Earned Wage Access Consumer Protection Act. It’s been introduced just recently this year. Now, it’s a crapshoot whether this goes anywhere, particularly in an election year, but it is interesting, I think, I’m sure you’re very familiar with this bill. What are your thoughts on it? Having a, I mean, obviously, having a federal framework is something that would be beneficial to your industry. It sounds like you don’t necessarily need it for what you’re doing, but how do you feel about it?

Nico Simko  18:04

Good question. I’m excited about it. Again, I’ll go back to my number one principle, which is very direct and clear, regulatory framework. Everybody wins, the consumer wins in the first place, providers win in the first place. We know what the limits are. I think that I would love for this bill to pass. I think that there are some constraints around the fact that there’s a loophole being opened in a very complicated lending environment. And I think it’s going to raise a lot of questions and a lot of debate on the floor. I think the essence of what is wanting to be created, which is saying, hey, get people away from, you know, standard lending practices like credit cards or payday loans. And what I mean by credit card is not the swipe, but like, you know, the high APR, you’re paying month over month over month, instead of, you know, one time small fee that you can pay to withdraw it. I think that’s what they’re, you know, that’s what they’re trying to do. And I think that’s right. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this kind of gets a little bit stuck. And it takes a little longer, or if it just takes years. And we’re still in this regulatory uncertainty. And during that time, I’d rather operate with regulatory certainty. And that, by the way, is loved by our payroll and workforce management partners, who they themselves are worried about partnering with someone who, in this current market, not in two years or in three, but in this current market has the right licenses across the states. And if we decide not to operate in the state, that’s our decision, but of course, we can apply for the licenses. And so that for me is what we’re going to do until there’s somethin g new that comes in the market.

Peter Renton  19:43

So would you change your model if there is a regulatory framework, federal framework that comes in place that makes it that you don’t need lending licenses?

Nico Simko  19:54

I think we’ll we’ll look at it. I think we’re always going to do, I think we’re always going to do what’s right for consumers, what’s right for us to offer the services. I again, I’m tied to just making sure that our payroll partners are protected that our consumers are protected. And what I mean by consumer protection to be specific is, do they understand that this is the best form of advances that they can get compared to any other form of you know, of borrowing that they can get out there. And one good example of this is what I call the TILA box. I think that TILA box does service consumers well, which is it kind of shows to them how much this is going to cost, right? Maybe the box needs to be adapted for new types of innovative products. But the TILA box is there to standardize disclosures so consumers can know what their borrowing costs are. And I think there’s, in an essence, something good there, right. And so I think we will adapt, but we will see the cost of adapting, whether it makes sense. Maybe there’s like, some products, we can launch that before we couldn’t. So I think it’s going to be a case by case basis and see where the bill will land.

Peter Renton  20:53

Right. And as you say, and then given Congress, particularly, things take a long time to get through Congress. So we could, you know, it’s not out of the question, this could be the 2030s, which is only six years away, could be the 2030s, before something like this is enacted. And meanwhile, you could very well have 25 states with earned wage access laws, right? Then you’re gonna have competition between the state and the federal government. And it could become, it could become complicated from a legal and regulatory, more so than it is now.

Nico Simko  21:20

So this is, what you talked about is the only thing that I’m pretty certain of. There will be, no but honestly, and so the thing that I’m trying to do here is, you know, if you have this very complex problem in front of you, I’m trying to not piece it together and play my…I’m just trying to circumvent it. And sure, it costs me more money, and it took me longer to go to market. But now that I have it, I don’t need to play that game, right? I’m in a completely different framework, but if it makes sense, for example, like I think we’re applying, I need to check with my compliance people, we were applying for an EWA license in one of the states, because my compliance team was like This would make sense for us to be seen that way, although it’s, you know, a national bank that’s issuing the advances, like all of these things, we will adapt for, but Peter, it’s going to be it’s gonna be all over the place. And I don’t want the noise. I want to go to payroll providers and workforce management systems and tell them, we don’t need to be in that debate.

Peter Renton  22:15

Okay, so I want to I want to talk about bank partnerships now. And it’s just interesting that I had Anthony Sharett on my podcast, just like two or three shows ago. He’s the president of Pathward, one of the leading banking as a service banks in in the country. And he actually mentioned you guys on the podcast. Tell us a little bit about the partnership with Pathward, and why you chose them.

Nico Simko  22:41

Well, I’m glad you had Anthony on the show, he’s an amazing person, and the whole team at Pathward is phenomenal. I think they choose their programs very carefully. They also, when we partnered with them, we had better offers to go with better, you know, different banks. We’re very happy we’re working with them because they know how to manage compliance. But you know, going back a little bit to your question is, I think the partnership we have with Pathward is excellent, because they are so mission aligned with us. They care a lot about America’s financial freedom. And they go on these innovative journeys with us at a high level to figure out what is the next set of products we’re going to be building. Because for us, we see earned wage access as a feature, we don’t see it as a product, we don’t see it as a company. And what that means is like, it is just a feature that is going to be existing in many, many platforms, and how you bring it to market and how you’re going to evolve that is gonna be key to both financial freedom of the hourly workforce and the salaried workforce out there. As well as how you’re going to be able to differentiate yourself in the market to investors to, you know, when you do, when you sell this product to your platforms. And so that’s why we like working with Pathward. And you know, that’s why we’ve kind of decided to partner with them.

Peter Renton  23:58

So I want to end with a couple of future looking questions. First one, I’d love to get your sense of you mentioned a couple times this is a feature, earned wage access, it shouldn’t be an entire company and you’ve also built your company with that in mind. Let’s fast forward, say 10 years. What do you think it looks like for the average person, for those let’s just say the majority of the salaried or hourly population? Let’s not even, let’s leave the gig workers out of it for now, but just, people who get a W2 at the end of the year. What’s it look like for them on a you know, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis with their wages?

Nico Simko  24:37

I love that this is where you’re going, Peter, because I’ve had this conversation multiple times, actually with my team for one hour, yesterday. And with investors and also with our partners. It’s a big idea that I’ve had, that the founding team has had, which is, we live in a world where your financial services, if you’re working paycheck to paycheck, so that can be salaried or hourly, is your financial life is very separate to your place of work, and those things don’t talk to one another, usually, like, you know, while our product and products that other providers are trying to bring to the market are helping, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of the kind of solutions we can be building. And I’ll be very specific. Today, if you’re an hourly worker, and you’re picking up shifts, and then you have your financial life on one side, a lot of hourly workers are asking themselves, am I going to make enough this this month in order to make rent, or should I pick up more shifts? There is no platform that really that ties what your bank account is saying to what your scheduling app is saying. So somebody needs to bring it together. Another one is, a lot of things in the tax code, actually make day to day transactions cheaper. One good example is if you live like me in New York, and you’re swiping, you know, the subway to go to work every day, that is a pre tax event in many cases. And what that means is that you could actually get cashback for swiping your own card to go to work every day. But you need your bank to be talking to your employer through the payroll system. And so how can you actually bring these products that, again, are features, but together, start building what I think is a product and a company, right, that is generational, which is son lead financial services, and I’ll take to the workplace. I’ll give you my my favorite one, which was actually built by one of our customers who asked for this. Hey, Nico, I actually don’t want your wage advances, because I’m pretty good at budgeting, but I’d like to have a better credit score. And so we ended up getting on a whiteboard with them, I was at an onsite. And they were like saying, Hey, can you actually take the wages I haven’t earned, put them aside, and then use that as a collateral to borrow again, so I can get a better credit score? And so how can you build a earned wage access product that is not about taking advances, it’s about building a better form of credit?

Peter Renton  26:49

A credit builder product wrapped into a product of earned wages.

Nico Simko  26:52

But the collateral is your own money that you’ve earned, but not yet…

Peter Renton  26:52

The money that you’re loaning to the company.

Nico Simko  26:53

And one more, just to tell you how big this can be. 401 Ks, if you’re lucky, you work at a job, they give you a 401 K, you need to decide this once a year. And we all sit in front of our computers, and we’re like, Well, how much should I put? 2% 3%? What’s the number? What’s the matching? What are my employers giving me? But that doesn’t work for most Americans. And the reason why is because some months they’d rather put nothing, and some other monthly rather put a lot. Why? Because they could pick up more shifts or less shifts. So could you create a, you know, a platform where you can see all your transactions, and it’s suggested to you every month or every paycheck how much you should put in your 401 K? Those are simple ideas, Peter, but they don’t exist out there, because no one’s building this. That’s where I think the future goes.

Peter Renton  27:41

Everyone can track their expenses, there’s so many ways to do that. And yet, the biggest sort of, on the other side of the ledger, the income coming in, has been ignored, basically, by fintechs, for the most part, I mean, there’s been like, there’s been some movement there. But you know, there should be, like you said, there should be all these products built in to that side. So I love, I love what you’re saying. So then, as you sort of look at that future, like what’s on tap for Clair in the next like, you know, 12 to 18 months?

Nico Simko  28:11

The number one focus we have is spending as much time as humanly possible with HR tech providers in the workforce management, scheduling time and attendance, and payroll space and PO space, to think about how their vision for their products can include and should include consumer financial services. And I’ll explain what that means. We spent so much time building the right products for customers and consumers and by customers, I mean, the consumers, that we have kind of like given to HR tech platforms a product out of the box. And that’s actually the case for most EWA providers, it’s like, let them sign up for an app, here’s the signup code, and then just pass them over to us, and we’ll be good. I think the future is a little bit more we co-create products. You know, if you’re a restaurant worker, and you’re receiving most of your money through tips, that’s a completely different experience. And no one’s solving this, like I’ve gotten emails again today, that people are coming to us for that piece of advice. And I think I want the team to be spending a bit more time thinking about how we grow the platform by treating these human capital management, payroll, workforce management systems as customers, and how do we build with them instead of them just referring solutions, or like referring customers to us? And that I’m really excited about. I’m really, really excited about, and I think that’s going to be an enormous unlock to have 10/20/30 million people using our products over the next few years.

Peter Renton  29:32

Have to leave it there. Fascinating discussion today. Really, really enjoyed it. And I like your approach. I look forward to the day when we can use that asset of ours, which is our unearned wages, or unpaid, shall we say you’ve earned them, unpaid wages, and that can be, that we can use it in multiple ways. So thank you so much for coming on the show today, Nico.

Nico Simko  29:54

Of course. Thank you so much, Peter.

Peter Renton  29:57 Well I hope you enjoyed the show. Thank you so much for listening. Please go ahead and give the show a review on the podcast platform of your choice and go tell your friends and colleagues about it. Anyway, on that note, I will sign off. I very much appreciate you listening, and I’ll catch you next time. Bye.

  • Peter RentonPeter Renton

    Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of Fintech Nexus, the world’s largest digital media company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series.