Wagestream partners with Visa to bring Income Streaming to Europe
Wagestream, a leading financial wellness company, which gives workers instant access to their earned wages before payday, has become the first income streaming company across Europe to work with Visa.
Together, Wagestream and Visa will deliver access to earned wages in real time, through the integration of Visa Direct, Visa’s real-time push payments platform.
Income streaming — also known as earned wage access (EWA) — allows workers to receive a percentage of their pay, as they earn it, any day of the month, whenever they need it. As a growing trend in workplace financial services, Earned Wage Access companies like Wagestream enable employers to provide new and inclusive financial products, boosting the financial resilience of employees and allowing workers to take greater control of their money.
Wagestream enables employees to withdraw a percentage of their earned wages before payday and now, by working with Visa, employees can opt to transfer funds directly to their Visa card using Visa Direct.
Wagestream is the first income streaming company to offer the Visa Direct service across Europe, giving employees more flexibility and transparency into their finances and the benefit of the speed and security of the global Visa network.
The scale and reach of the Visa network will also add significant scale to Wagestream’s expanding global footprint as they look to bring the benefits of earned wage access to workers and employers in other regions across the globe.
This is even more important now as the world starts to recover from the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and workers feel increased financial pressure. Income streaming has continued to grow throughout the pandemic, with adoption especially increasing in healthcare, hospitality and retail industries. Over 350,000 European employees now have access to their earnings through Wagestream. Wagestream continues to play a key role as a recovery benefit, alleviating workplace stress and driving employee recruitment, retention and productivity.
In fact, Wagestream’s own data shows that shift workers choose to work 22% more hours on average once enrolled in the service. The company’s research also showed that 77% of users felt less stressed, 38% had avoided going into their overdraft and 43% said they’d avoided using a payday loan.
Wagestream integrates with an employer’s payroll system to calculate each employee’s available balance to withdraw, meaning that workers only have access to earned funds, without needing to rely on expensive, short-term credit to bridge their way to payday. There are no loans or credit involved and therefore there is no repayment and no interest charged.
Wagestream, founded for social impact, is currently experiencing rapid growth and this month revealed a successful €22m Series B funding round.
Peter Briffett, CEO and Co-Founder of Wagestream, commented:
“Income Streaming is revolutionising pay for millions of workers and is one of the most important financial resilience innovations in generations.
“Our partnership with Visa is going to improve the flexibility of income streaming even further, by empowering our platform across Europe and allowing workers to choose which account they want to stream their money into.
“On demand access to money that has already been earned will become a right, not privilege, and it is going to play a critical role in alleviating financial stress, particularly among those on lower incomes.”
Bill Sheley, SVP and Global Head of Visa Direct, said:
“Covid-19 has impacted the global workforce greatly, and it’s more important than ever that we find ways to support workers on the frontlines, helping them get faster access to their money when they need it in order to pay for life’s necessities.
“We’re proud to be working with Wagestream to offer their users more control of their finances, especially during these challenging times.”
Notes to Editors
For more information, please contact:
Jonny Stevens | Rhizome Media | jonny@rhizomemedia.co | 07977 119 579
David Bullock | Rhizome Media | DavidBullock@rhizomemedia.co | 07762 079 092
Neil Millard, Rhizome Media | neil@rhizomemedia.co | 07803 560 331
Georgie Scott | Wagestream | pressoffice@wagestream.com
About Wagestream
Wagestream is on a mission to bring better financial health to workers across the globe. By putting workplace data into the hands of workers, Wagestream’s financial solutions allow employees to track, budget, save and stream their earnings, all in real time.
Wagestream unlocks the constraints of the monthly pay cycle, and eradicates the debt issues and financial stress many workers face between pay days by giving them instant access to their earned wages. Wagestream was founded with a social purpose and its early charity investors include Fair by Design, Joseph Rowntree, Barrow Cadbury Trust, and Big Society Capital, social impact charities committed to improving the financial wellbeing of everyday people.
Wagestream Ltd is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority as an EMD Agent (ref: 902046) of Electronic Money Institutions authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority: PayrNet Limited (ref: 900594); and Modulr FS Limited (ref: 900573).
www.wagestream.com
About Visa Inc.
Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is the world’s leader in digital payments. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, reliable and secure payment network – enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second. The company’s relentless focus on innovation is a catalyst for the rapid growth of digital commerce on any device for everyone, everywhere. As the world moves from analogue to digital, Visa is applying our brand, products, people, network and scale to reshape the future of commerce. For more information, visit About Visa, visa.co.uk/blog and @VisaNewsEurope.