Wagestream, a UK-based startup enabling employees to get their salaries early, has reportedly received backing from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
The FinTech has raised £4.5m from investors, which included Amazon’s and Microsoft’s billionaire founders, according to The Times.
Headquartered in London, Wagestream allows a company’s employees to have complete control over when they get paid. It claims to effectively ends the need for employee advances, loans and employee stress suffered from short term, unplanned financial obligations.
The startup has created a mobile app which enables employees of participating businesses to gain access to funds from their salary packages for a flat fee of £1.75. The total sum is then taken from the employees’ salaries on pay day.
Wagestream connects directly with the company’s timekeeping systems and makes a percentage of reported hours/earnings available to their employees. When an employee requests a transfer, Wagestream funds that transfer from its own balance sheet.
Wagestream is paid back through your company’s normal payroll process, meaning there is no change to the company’s current payroll process, including the timing of payroll funds.
The company has launched a pilot with 25 businesses, employing 20,000 people, with participants including Travelodge and David Lloyd.
Wagestream’s funding comes just days after payday loans platform Wonga went into administration. Wonga, founded in London in the Autumn of 2006, provided “short-term, high-cost credit” and had operations in the UK, Poland, Spain and South Africa. The company, which provided loans with interest rates of up to 5800 per cent, crashed after it struggled to fund compensation for an increasing number of customer complaints.
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