Alex Bradford, CEO of Rain, on earned wage access

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Alex Bradford, CEO of Rain

The earned wage access (EWA) space is maturing and now has some players that are getting real scale. In many industries it has gone from a curiosity to a must-have for employers. As the space scales there are bigger questions in play. How can we ensure that all salaried workers have access to this innovative product, so they don’t need to provide an interest free loan to their employers every pay period?

My guest today on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Alex Bradford, the CEO and founder or Rain. Rain is part of the new breed of EWA providers that learned from the lessons of the early movers in the space when building their product. They now have over a million employees on their app and they see the real financial benefit that EWA is providing their users, particularly those living paycheck to paycheck.

In this podcast you will learn:

  • Why Alex got so excited when he discovered the EWA space.
  • Why he thought the timing was great to start his company in 2019.
  • How their system works for both the employer and employee.
  • The different types of users of Rain.
  • How they know Rain is being beneficial for their users’ financial health.
  • How using Rain has changed their users’ behavior.
  • The impact that Rain has on employee retention.
  • What they are doing with the large HR software companies.
  • How Rain is engaging with state and federal regulators.
  • What they have on their product roadmap.
  • What it will take to make EWA ubiquitous.

Read a transcription of our conversation below.

FINTECH ONE-ON-ONE PODCAST NO. 518 – ALEX BRADFORD

Alex Bradford: Our average user is spending around $180 a month, just essentially waiting for their next paycheck. And that’s in the form of predatory fees, overdraft fees, et cetera, but it’s also in the form of late payment fees. And it’s also in the form of not being able to buy things in bulk, which has an effective cost. And that’s just purely the financial costs of living paycheck to paycheck or day to day or week to week, right? Not to mention the financial stress that comes from being in that situation, which is purely from the financial standpoint. Our average user is spending around $180 a month before they start using Rain. When they start using Rain, they pay a tiny fraction of that. Just from the financial standpoint, we’re saving the user around $160 bucks a month.

Peter Renton: This is the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the show for fintech enthusiasts looking to better understand the leaders shaping fintech and banking today. My name is Peter Renton, and since 2013, I’ve been conducting in-depth interviews with fintech founders and banking executives. On the show today, we have Alex Bradford, the CEO and founder of Rain. Now, Rain has quickly become one of the leaders in the earned-wage access space, or EWA, as Alex likes to call it. Regular listeners will know this is one of my favorite spaces in all of fintech, so I had to get Alex on the show. We cover a lot of territory in this episode. We talk about Rain’s model, obviously. We talk about their user engagement, what’s in it for employers, partnering with HR companies, engaging with regulators, and much more. Now, let’s get on with the show.

Welcome to the podcast, Alex.

AB: Hi Peter. Thanks for having me.

PR: My pleasure. So let’s get started by giving the listeners a little bit of background about yourself. Why don’t you hit on some of the high points of your career to date?

AB: Yeah. So Rain is my third fintech. I’ve been building companies for a while. Before starting companies, I had brief stints at Goldman and McKinsey. I went to Stanford undergrad, and got my MBA from HBS.

PR: All right. Nice. That’s some good names there. Let’s talk about Rain and how you decided to get started. What was the aha moment? What’s the genesis of the company?

AB: Yeah, around 2018, late 2018, I heard about the employer-integrated consumer financial services category. I heard about this company in Europe actually. I was doing employer-integrated installment loans, and I heard they were doing very well. In my previous lives, I had done a lot of research in the payroll software space. I did a lot of research on the buy now, pay later space. And also a lot of work in the microcredit space back in college. In college, I TA’d this course called Social Entrepreneurship, and a big part of that course was focused on microcredit. Anyway, kind of triangulating those three different areas. When I heard about this new category, the light bulbs went off and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I kept asking myself, why is there no big company in this category? It must be a huge TAM. Certainly, this can help tens of millions of people. So the TAM was clear. I was like, actually, the business model is probably really strong as well, because in terms of the unit economics, as I started digging in, it reminded me more and more of buy now pay later and sort of payroll software. And I just know that the HR tech space is very fragmented. It’s very nuanced. There’s room for multiple players. It’s not winner takes all. It tends to have really good business models as well. If you look at the payroll software companies and their financial statements, you know they just keep growing and expanding margins quarter over quarter. But the thing that was most exciting to me about the space was like, wow, you know, so many people are living paycheck to paycheck, relying on predatory products still like payday loans and overdraft fees, etc. And I grew up with a single mom in the 80s. And I remember what that’s like, you know, for a lot of my childhood. And I thought, wow, I mean, there’s a new product that could effectively kill or almost kill those old school predatory products that really shouldn’t exist anymore, and help tens of millions of people and be a great business and a huge revenue opportunity. That’s that’s like the dream. That’s exactly what I’d been looking for. So once these light bulbs went off, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was just a nonstop obsession. And I talked to any employer that would talk to me, any HR software company that would talk to me, any investor that had looked at HR tech that would talk to me, I just talked to everyone. And I realized a few things. I realized, first of all, that the main two incumbents in the earned wage access space at the time had different challenges. And there’s probably an opportunity to build a new company that kind of solves some of those issues from day one. And then the other thing is we realized that most of the employers we talked to had never heard of earned wage access.

PR: Right.

AB: And so we were not too late to the party. And also the other thing we realized is that a lot of the payroll software and timekeeping software systems that we connect to for our product structure. There are hundreds of payroll software companies; there are hundreds of timekeeping software companies. I realized that most of them, by 2018 and 2019, were already in the cloud and opened up their APIs in the cloud or were in the process of opening up their APIs. Whereas five years or five or 10 years before that point, most of the payroll and timekeeping software companies really didn’t have APIs or reliant APIs that you could connect to and automate this EWA product structure. The point I’m making is that the timing was really interesting in 2019.

PR: Right. Gotcha. Okay. So, let’s get into Rain itself. Maybe you could explain how your product works. How does it work for employers? How does it work for employees?

AB: Yeah. So the way it works is we sign an exclusive contract with employers, and then we onboard the employer. We connect to their payroll software system and their timekeeping software system. And then we launch, together with the employer, and offer Rain to all of the active employees at the employer. The employee user hears about Rain. They sign up, it usually takes a minute to sign up. They connect their bank account to Rain, and then they’re in the app. Then, in real-time, the user can see their earned wages and can access their earned wages through a few different options. There’s an instant option where we send to the user’s primary deposit account. There is the ACH option on the ACH rails, and that’s a free option. And then the third option is if the user signs up for a Rain checking account and debit card, we offer free unlimited instant EWA. So the first option, we charge a fee, it’s around a $3 fee, it’s like a fixed ATM fee, standard in the space. And that’s the main way that we monetize. Those are the three funding options for the employee user. And then we’re funding the user from our structure, from our balance sheet. And then on payday, we are paid back by the employer automatically through what’s called a variable payroll software deduction flow.

PR: Right.

AB: That’s a big part of our magic sauce with our product structures. We figured out how to automate repayment with effectively no losses. And because we have no losses, we can offer drastically lower fees versus payday loans and overdrafts, et cetera. The big two areas of our product structure are number one, data ingestion, and calculating the earned wage balance. There’s a ton of engineering that went into that part of our magic sauce. There’s just a lot of nuance when you’re ingesting data from hundreds of systems in real-time in different formats at different times. The data is not perfect all the time, right? So you have to clean up the data and make sense of broken data. So there’s this whole complex backend data engine that we had to build, that we call Nexus at Rain. To my knowledge, we have the highest user adoption in the category because we’re so good at calculating the earned wage balance. Our average adoption is around 20%. So, 20 % of onboarded employees are active users.

PR: Wow. Okay. Just to be really clear about this, when an employee comes on, they connect their bank account, you know that they’re an employee of this company. Therefore, the payroll is happening on the backend. There’s nothing they need to do. Is that correct?

AB: That’s right. So, by the time the employee signs up for Rain, we’ve already connected to their employer’s payroll software account and the employer’s timekeeping software account. So we’re ingesting all the employee data or the basic employee data that we need for our products, such as first name, last name, email, cell phone number, wage or salary rate, start date, and just basic data fields like that from the payroll system. And then from the timekeeping system, which is usually a different system, most employers will use one company for payroll, a different company for timekeeping, we’re ingesting the timestamp data. So, it’s just a few columns of data with all the punch-in, punch-out timestamps. That’s how we calculate the earned wage balance.

PR: Right. And so that’s obviously real-time then if someone will clock out, go to the app and they’ll see that that day’s work is now being earned kind of thing.

AB: Yeah, exactly. So as soon as the user punches out of their job, at let’s say Taco Bell, a minute or five minutes later, they’ll see their earned wage balance, including the wages they just earned that day.

PR: Right, right. OK. Maybe you could talk about the usage itself. Like, once they sign up and they use it once, I presume they become repeat users, right? What can you talk about as far as the usage goes?

AB: When people are signing up for Rain, they become reoccurring users and make multiple withdrawals per month. And what’s interesting is there are a few types of user archetypes. There’s the first type of user, who really is living day to day or within a few days of their cash means. That type of user might need Rain to pay for diapers tonight for their baby, to buy groceries today, or to pay for gas to go to work. So, that’s the first user archetype. The second user archetype is someone who needs Rain really just to pay bills month to month. They’re using Rain so they can make the rent payment on time or their car payment on time. And then the third type of user is really using Rain mainly for emergencies. Their car broke down, or maybe they have to fix a tooth or, that kind of thing. Approximately 40 % of our users are in the first archetype, another 40 % in the second archetype, and the remaining 20 % are in the last archetype.

PR: Right, right. So then, so the emergency people wouldn’t be using it very often, right?

AB: Yeah.

PR: The other 80%, you said, are probably using it multiple times a month, right? Are you measuring how they are using it to their benefit? Like, they’re no longer going to payday lenders. They’re really becoming more financially healthy. What  I’m getting at is how do know Rain is being beneficial?

AB: Yeah, it’s a great question. So we do track that. We do a bunch of surveys, and what’s interesting is that there are a lot of benefits for employees. So, based on our research, essentially our average user is spending around $180 a month, just essentially waiting for their next paycheck. And that’s in the form of predatory fees, overdraft fees, etc. But it’s also in the form of late payment fees. And it’s also in the form of not being able to buy things in bulk, which has an effective cost. And that’s just purely the financial costs of living paycheck to paycheck or day to day or week to week, right? Not to mention the financial stress that comes from being in that situation, which is purely from the financial standpoint. Our average user is spending around $180 a month before they start using Rain. When they start using Rain, they pay a tiny fraction of that. Just from the financial standpoint, we’re saving the user around $160 a month by not paying those extra fees or the effective fees. Right?

PR: Right.

AB: But what’s also interesting is by removing the stress, which is arguably even more costly for people, that’s the real benefit, right? Because if you can’t pay for your family’s groceries today, that’s an extremely stressful situation, obviously. And if you can’t pay for gas to get to your job, how are you going to get to your job? So these are real-world issues that a lot of Americans are going through, of course. And it’s stressful out there. And so this earned wage access product, I would argue, is one of the most impactful employee benefits that can actually reduce stress and get people sort of on a better path. It’s a product, a benefit that will help people actually be more productive and be able to show up to the job on time. Another interesting phenomenon that we saw is that EWA users actually work more hours. Our users, when they become a Rain user, they actually end up working more hours every month. And we think it’s for these reasons. It’s because we’ve removed some stress for them and they’re able to work more hours. That’s based on the data and what our users are telling us. The other thing that’s really interesting is that if you’re paid today, not only are you more likely to work today, but you are also more likely to be responsible and think about your daily expenses.

PR: Right.

AB: The status quo is people are paid every two weeks in this country. In most of the world, people are paid once a month. The reason for that is because it’s not because that’s what employees want, it’s because that’s what employers want. And that’s what the laws also sort of allow for. In the U.S., you have this thing called constructive receipt, where employers, by law, must pay payroll taxes and social contributions one to three business days after they pay wages. And so that’s why it’d be impossible for basically any employer to pay daily wages because that would mean they’d be paying daily payroll taxes and social contributions, which no employer wants to do or can do. They would need to increase the size of their team. For those reasons and other reasons, essentially the administrative burden for employers, this is the main reason why employers are paying biweekly. That’s all we can remember is biweekly pay, or some employers do weekly pay, but most employers in the US are doing biweekly pay because that’s how it’s always been. We just think that’s how it should be. Status quo. But that’s not how it should be. People should have access to their earned wages. It’s just the right thing for society. Employees should not be financing their employers. That’s effectively what’s happening today. It’s insane when you think about it. We live in a world all over the world where employees are financing their employers. Wow.

PR: At zero percent, right?

AB: That is the definition of a broken financial system. It’s a broken payroll system. You know, EWA is one part of an overall solution to that broken financial system, broken payroll system. But what’s interesting is when you think if you get paid every two weeks, and typically payday is Friday, versus having access to pay daily, in what scenario are you more likely to blow cash on payday, on the weekend? Well, of course, the first scenario, right? And that’s based on our data and surveys and focus groups. That’s what we see is that our users become less likely to do wasteful spending or blow cash on the weekend of payday. And they actually become more aware and more conscious of their daily expenses. So revenue goes up, expenses go down, and stress goes way down. So this is a huge value add for employees. And as a result, it’s a huge value add for employers.

PR: Right.

AB: I talked about the productivity point. A lot of our clients, their number one pain point is just getting their people to consistently show up to the job and to retain their employees. And so, EWA is one very important solution to help employers drive retention and productivity. And what we see is that among our user base, when eligible employees become active users, they’re approximately 30% – 35 % less likely to turn.

PR: Interesting. That’s huge.

AB: Huge impact on retention. We see that the average user is working, I think it’s around 20 hours more per month.

PR: Wow.

AB: That’s kind of shocking.

PR: Right. I think the other piece around that is that there, and I’d love to get your sense of, like, people checking the app because I, when I’ve spoken to some others in the industry, it’s like people suddenly become aware. Cause right now, if you, like the average person, if you’re not using earned wage access, you kind of have some vague idea of what your balance is that your employer owes you as you go through. But most people don’t even think about it, right? They just get their pay on payday, and then they’re done for two weeks. But with people doing earned wage access, they suddenly are hyper-aware of what their balance is on a daily basis. How many people are checking their app every day?

AB: I forget the exact percent, but it’s a big percent of our users are checking the app daily. I think it’s even the majority of our users are checking their balance.

PR: Right.

AB: I think one of our investors, QED, said that this product of the earned wage balance product feature, is the most engaging product feature in consumer finance.

PR: I don’t disagree, because I think it is, particularly when you see it going up every day. Obviously, there are times you need to withdraw down on it, but for the most part, they’re checking, and they go, look, I’ve made another $250. It’s a great habit to get into actually, I think, to check that every day so you can see it going. And so then you’re hyper-aware. I have a dentist bill; it’s going to be $500 bucks that I need to really take care of. So I’m going to take it out. But then I’m seeing my balance go down, and then suddenly, you know, I’ve got to work that back up. It’s just more awareness. So it makes sense that people I think, are working longer hours and they’re being more financially healthy. I think it may be, you know, the greatest innovation that we’ve seen in the history of fintech really.

AB: Yeah, I would agree. I would agree.

PR: Let’s move on. I want to talk about HR and some of the big companies in the HR space. You’ve obviously got ADP, you’ve got Workday. I noticed both of those companies on your website. Maybe explain what you’re doing with some of the large HR companies.

AB: Yeah. So we partner with a lot of the large, medium, and some small HR software companies and we have three flavors of partnerships. The first is an API integration or marketplace partnership. And it’s really a formal partnership with a signed contract. It might take months or years to actually form the partnership. And that’s the kind of partnership we have with major software players like UKG, Workday, ADP, and a bunch of others. The second type of partnership is a referral partnership where if the partner, which could be a financial institution, a benefits broker, a payroll software company, or a timekeeping software company, helps us essentially assign one of their clients, then there’s a little bit of economics in it for them. We also help them and vice versa and help them with referrals, et cetera. And then the third bucket of partnerships is a productized partnership that comes in a few different versions. That could be a full-fledged white label where the partner has built EWA on our APIs. The second version would be sort of a carbon copy clone of our app, but with the partner’s branding, and we do both of those. And then there’s another version, which is more of a sort of productized SDK approach where we’ll drop a widget into the partners product interface. And, for example, a timekeeping interface where when the employee is punching out of their job, they can see, “Cash out with Rain.” They can see the “Cash out with Rain” button in the timekeeping interface, which will take the user to our product. So there are a few different versions of how we’re productizing with partners, which is really interesting because with one productized partnership you have, in theory, you can have a lot more scale. One partnership you can onboard hundreds of thousands or even millions in just a few months, millions of eligible employees.

PR: Okay. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about regulation. Earned Wage Access has had a lot of activity, shall we say, on the state level, not so much on the federal level, although CFPB has weighed in with proposed new rules. So how is Rain engaging with regulators at the state and federal level?

AB: Our approach is to be essentially relatively hands-off in terms of trying to shape regulations. But there have been six states that have put out EWA regs, and we are complying with all of those six EWA frameworks, which typically just means registering or getting a license with the state and agreeing to do ongoing reporting and complying with the state’s relevant laws, which usually might be some cost disclosure laws. One state, Connecticut, has regulations around fees. So, in Connecticut in particular, there’s some question if that effective fee cap will remain or if it will get pulled back. We’re hearing it’ll get pulled back. I think what’s happening across the country is most states are looking at EWA and thinking of EWA as not a traditional credit product. You could argue it’s a new kind of credit product, but it’s certainly not a traditional credit product with the same risks for consumers. The whole point of this product is to effectively end those old-school products that can have bad outcomes for consumers, right? It seems like most states are seeing that point. California, for example, on October 11th, they passed their EWA framework. And I think they did an excellent job over three iterations in two and a half years with that framework. Essentially what the California model says is that you have to register with the state, and you have to do ongoing reporting. And as long as you do these certain cost disclosures and reporting, then you’re registered. There’s no cap on the instant fee. So, essentially, it’s an exemption for registered EWA providers to California’s credit laws. And other states have essentially done the same thing. And from the intel that we are hearing, it seems like the vast majority of the country, most states, will do the same thing, some version of the California model. And there might be some states that that have a cap, a fee cap on the instant fee. We’re hearing that that fee cap could be in the $5 plus range, which I think could be a good thing for consumers. It wouldn’t impact our business model. And I think there’s some confusion now between the CFPB and their July ruling and how states are looking at the category. Because that’s part of the issue with the US you have the CFPB, which is Warren’s agency under Dodd-Frank, and it’s a new agency, still figuring out their modus operandi. I think they proposed this July ruling, which essentially says, hey, EWA is a type of credit, and EWA providers, therefore, must comply with Reg Z and TILA, which in particular must comply with the fee disclosure guidelines. On the surface, that makes total sense. EWA players should be transparent about their pricing. I think the confusion they created is because of the way the laws are written; at the federal level, there’s no category of EWA. It’s just a broad category of consumer credit. And if you try and put this new innovative EWA product that’s really trying to solve a lot of the problems of traditional credit. If you put this new product into the traditional credit bucket and try to regulate it along those lines, it does create some confusion. So, I think there does need to be some work done at the federal level to clear up that confusion. I’m not sure if that should be the CFPB or if that should be a bill, but I think it could certainly help the space if the confusion is cleared up at the federal level. You could argue it doesn’t really matter because the states seem to be doing the right thing for consumers, which is passing some version of what California has passed. Arguably, California is the most progressive state in the country when it comes to regulating consumer finance. Again, they’ve done a fantastic job. I think that is the model the country needs. Now, I think it’s just a matter of time until most states essentially follow the California framework.

PR: Right, right. California often takes the lead in creating frameworks that do get adopted nationally. But before we go, a couple more things I really want to get to. Are you looking to expand beyond your EWA product to other financial wellness tools? What are the plans there?

AB: Yeah. So most of our roadmap is still focused on EWA, and building out our EWA platform. Some examples there include things we’re doing for employers to drive engagement, and analytics tools, features and tools that can help employers essentially drive more adoption with this product and be more aware of the value they’re getting from EWA. So that would be one type of example. Another example is we’re building out our own deposit account product with a debit card. That is a free, completely free product for employees. We think it’s super important to offer a free instant product for employees. That’s a full-fledged deposit account. It’s a checking account with bill pay features, and pretty much every key feature you get at Chase or Bank of America, all those basic features will be available in that product. And I see that one as part of core earned wage access to offer that kind of deposit account structure. That’s how you offer free instant EWA, right? And then we’re also looking at building an innovative credit product. It’s a full-fledged credit product with a banking partner that will help the user build their credit score. The thing is, based on our data, we know that a huge percentage of the eligible employees right now, we have over a million eligible employees on our platform, we know a very large percentage of them have poor credit. We know that a large percentage of them do not have access to a credit card or any type of credit line product. And so we think there’s something really interesting there, a completely new kind of credit product where the credit limit is pegged to earned wages. And there’s no risk to the employee in terms of going into debt because we’re still essentially paid back by the employer. The core product doesn’t really help the user build their credit score. This new credit product would. We think that’s a huge deal for our users and also a lot of eligible employees who don’t necessarily need EWA but still would like to improve their credit scores. There are actually several really interesting things in the world of credit adjacent to our core EWA product that we’re looking at building this year. One product in particular. A lot of the roadmaps are sort of in those areas I just listed. And there are some other products that we’re looking at as well, in particular in the world of savings. We think there are some really cool differentiated savings products that need to get built where you can, as a provider, do differentiated things that a direct consumer player can’t do because you are integrated with the employer’s payroll infrastructure. Just as one example, with health savings accounts and flex savings accounts. So, only 15 % of Americans actually use a health savings account. The reason is because it’s actually, surprisingly, a lot of work for employers to administer a health savings program. It’s also a decent amount of work for employees, in terms of their tax filings, etc. So that’s just because it’s a clunky, kind of old-school product structure and also regulatory regime around health savings accounts. And I think there’s something really interesting there where we can automate a lot of the product structure and essentially make it vastly easier for employers to offer a health savings account. We can build that kind of differentiated product because we’re connected to all these payroll systems. Ultimately, the big idea here is, how can we help our eligible employees of our clients essentially get on a better path, which ultimately means increase their revenue on their P & L and decrease their expenses on their P & L.

PR: Yeah, interesting. Okay. So then, last question, I want to get your vision for the future of wages, shall we say in this country or even globally. While there’s no system set up for us to do daily wages natively, when is the tipping point going to happen where everyone gets paid whenever they want. What do you think it’s going to take to get there?

AB: That is the question, right? I think it needs to be a combination of factors. Number one, it’s continued investment and innovation in this category of earned wage access and the adjacent categories. I think it’s also a regulatory environment that not only clears the path for this category and removes any confusion or uncertainty, etc., that employers or stakeholders may have. But I think the ultimate would be, if politicians could even mandate earned wage access or a certain level of earned wage access, for example, a certain number of employers must offer a certain number of earned wage withdrawals per pay period or something along those lines. I think that would be the ultimate way to really help people in this space. Still, I think the space is very early. You’re still talking about probably mid to high single-digit market penetration in terms of the percentage of the workforce that has access to employer-integrated EWA. And so that’s still very early. We’re still in the early days of the S curve. And the reason is because this category has been around for a while now. We’re going on, I think it’s over 10 years. I think Payactiv was really the first. But you still have a lot of employers that are just sort of on the sidelines. And they know that eventually, they need to offer EWA, but they’re waiting. I think the vast majority of employers fall into that camp. They know they’ll need to offer EWA eventually, but it’s just for them, it’s a question of when. We know that many employers just prefer to wait.

PR: Yeah, status quo.

AB: Yeah, and so they really need to; in several industries, EWA is becoming a must-have. In QSR and hospitality and several others, even healthcare now, some areas of healthcare. If you don’t offer EWA, but your competitor down the street does, you’re going to have a hard time. Market forces are already at play there. But I mean, it just goes back to the overall value of this product. It’s insane that employees are financing their employers. Most employers know that they need to do this and do the right thing, but it would certainly help if regulators could facilitate this, you know, the market wins much more than they are. I think, again, states like California have helped a lot, but frankly, regulators should be helping vastly more than they are. I don’t think regulators are even aware of how they could help or how important this product can be for their constituents. This is something I’ve been thinking about more and more in the last few months. Although, like I said, until now, we haven’t been that involved with regulators. But I would like for us to get more involved going forward and at least try and help with awareness and education and sponsoring more research initiatives that we give to policymakers, that sort of thing. Again, I do think that the regulatory side, I think it’s moving in the right direction. just think it can move a lot faster.

PR: Okay. Well, that’s a good place to end it on. Alex, really great to chat with you thanks so much for coming on the show today.

AB: Thanks, Peter. I enjoyed the chat.

PR: Until every employee has access to their wages whenever they want, there will be more work to do with earned wage access. You know, I firmly believe it is the best solution for most people who are living paycheck to paycheck. What I don’t understand is why regulators, and particularly consumer advocates, are not pushing for this product more aggressively. It can take people away from the payday lending debt spiral permanently, and thereby improve their financial health. And as I said in the interview, EWA may well be the best fintech innovation for financial health ever created. Anyway, that’s it for today’s show. If you enjoy these episodes, please go ahead and subscribe, tell a friend, or leave a review. And thank you so much for listening.