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Launch HN: Payflow (YC S21) – Allow workers to access their wages instantly

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11–20 of 96 posts

Re: Launch HN: Payflow (YC S21) – Allow workers to access their wages instantly

#11
Hi Benoît & Avi,

As part of my advisory business, I've seen a few companies tackling this in Africa. My biggest question has been, isn't this a "feature" than can be deployed by the existing Payroll companies?

These days we have a lot of Credit As A Service companies. Why can't a Payroll service connect to them and provide this service as an add on.

To summarize my question: can your innovation get distribution before the Payroll services get (this) innovation?

Or wouldn't you inadvertently have to encroach into that space eventually?

Or do you see yourself extending towards the credit side of things?

All the best!

Re: Launch HN: Payflow (YC S21) – Allow workers to access their wages instantly

#12
post #7

> We thought employees would use our app because it’s innovative, but they mostly use it because they really need the money. This came as a surprise to us. I'm having real difficulty working out how this could possibly have come as a surprise, of course people are using your pay advance app because they really need the money. Why else would someone take an advance on their pay?

Good point. It would have been more accurate to state that we were surprised at how much people used the app! Over 40% of employees that have access to our app use it! Also, we were surprised by how high user retention is.

Re: Launch HN: Payflow (YC S21) – Allow workers to access their wages instantly

#13

It's a great problem to solve, and killing the payday loan industry is a good thing to do. Out of curiosity, why is the app UI and feature set practically identical to Wagestream (I worked there last year, so i'm pretty familiar with it)?

Wow, you aren't kidding. Even the copy on the landing page is a Spanish translation of Wagestream's landing page.

Who fancies making Cashriver?

Re: Launch HN: Payflow (YC S21) – Allow workers to access their wages instantly

#14

It's a great problem to solve, and killing the payday loan industry is a good thing to do. Out of curiosity, why is the app UI and feature set practically identical to Wagestream (I worked there last year, so i'm pretty familiar with it)?

Wow, you aren't kidding. Even the copy on the landing page is a Spanish translation of Wagestream's landing page.

What exactly is the same? I just checked and they look different.

Re: Launch HN: Payflow (YC S21) – Allow workers to access their wages instantly

#15
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, you aren't kidding. Even the copy on the landing page is a Spanish translation of Wagestream's landing page.

What exactly is the same? I just checked and they look different.

Scroll down to the app screenshots on payflow.es and wagestream.com. The UI for withdrawing cash is pretty much identical.

Re: Launch HN: Payflow (YC S21) – Allow workers to access their wages instantly

#16

It's a great problem to solve, and killing the payday loan industry is a good thing to do. Out of curiosity, why is the app UI and feature set practically identical to Wagestream (I worked there last year, so i'm pretty familiar with it)?

Wow, you aren't kidding. Even the copy on the landing page is a Spanish translation of Wagestream's landing page.

At first I thought I was looking at a newly-launched Spanish brand of Wagestream (they have launched in other countries under different names, so it wouldn't be unexpected).

I know Payflow has a subtly different value proposition (not charging for withdrawals). And it's totally conceivable that this is the obvious UI for this feature set, but it's really hard to miss the glaring similarities.

Re: Launch HN: Payflow (YC S21) – Allow workers to access their wages instantly

#17

It’s great that you’re finding a way to pay people quicker that’s less bad than payday loans! What stops employers from paying wages more often right now? When I worked in the US, some places would pay you every two weeks. With instant bank transfers, couldn’t that frequency go down to weekly or daily, without the need for a middleman?

A lot of it would depend upon how payroll is handled. There are plenty of employers where the hours worked are written on paper, then transcribed to a common document format and sent to payroll, then transcribed into the payroll software. Since so much of the process is manual, it is likely to be batched and performed weekly. Even when it is done daily, the daily is unlikely to include weekends (which is shifted to end of day Monday). In other words, they would have to completely alter their process to actually pay daily. That alone would likely make the process more expensive. Doing more bank transfers would add more expenses. The software used to handle payroll is a middleman for all intents and purposes, and that is unlikely to go away.

For what it's worth, I have seen that process used in both the private and public sector as well as with organizations that employ thousands of people.

Re: Launch HN: Payflow (YC S21) – Allow workers to access their wages instantly

#18
post #15
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the same? I just checked and they look different.

Scroll down to the app screenshots on payflow.es and wagestream.com. The UI for withdrawing cash is pretty much identical.

Thanks, yes it looks like a 1:1 copy. Interestingly, the founders reply to other questions here but not to the copy accusation.

Re: Launch HN: Payflow (YC S21) – Allow workers to access their wages instantly

#19
post #17

It’s great that you’re finding a way to pay people quicker that’s less bad than payday loans! What stops employers from paying wages more often right now? When I worked in the US, some places would pay you every two weeks. With instant bank transfers, couldn’t that frequency go down to weekly or daily, without the need for a middleman?

A lot of it would depend upon how payroll is handled. There are plenty of employers where the hours worked are written on paper, then transcribed to a common document format and sent to payroll, then transcribed into the payroll software. Since so much of the process is manual, it is likely to be batched and performed weekly. Even when it is done daily, the daily is unlikely to include weekends (which is shifted to e…

> There are plenty of employers where the hours worked are written on paper, then transcribed to a common document format and sent to payroll.

My understanding of this solution is also that it depends on the payroll systems? As such, they also depend on manual batching effectively, before the advance can be paid.

Re: Launch HN: Payflow (YC S21) – Allow workers to access their wages instantly

#20
Since as I understand you are expanding to LatAm, as someone having worked in Colombia for the last 5 years on b2b and b2c tech products for people on the low to mid side of the socio-economic spectrum, some top of mind thoughts. Hope it helps.

- Living paycheck to paycheck is a problem, but the underlying cause is more often than not having a job month by month. Even more so since the pandemic. The majority of people work in informality, only have contractor contracts or work for temp agencies with the outlook to eventually get hired into the client company.

- There is very little trust within society. People are very skeptical, justifiably so, to get screwed over by new financial products. Also employers have very little trust in their employees. At least from an European perspective it is ridiculous what hoops people have to jump trough to get basic jobs. Background checks, lie detector, medical exams, etc. Which means it can easily take 1 month+ from first interview to starting work.

- Economic gap is massive. The decision makers you are going to sell your product to often live and have lived their entire lives in completely different universes than the potential users. So you are going to have mixed experience how empathetic they are to the cause. Some certainly are and want to make a change.

- Many people don't have bank accounts where you could transfer the money to. As far as I know this has changed quite a bit during pandemic but cash and cheques are still very common.

- The very small amounts ($50-70) you mention are quite a bit of money here. Minimum salary is $260. A small amount here would be more like - The users are going to have a ~$50 android phone laden with ISP nonsense, outdated OS, pre-paid expensive data plans and flakey internet connections where they live. So the app needs not just be shiny, but efficient.

Within the group we also launched products in Mexico and Peru, where some things are different but haven't been involved much in that. Happy to chat about if you are interested.

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