The move is designed to empower employers to offer free, compliant wage advances to their workforces
Clair, the fintech company offering free Earned Wage Advances originated by Pathward®, N.A., has announced a new partnership with payroll infrastructure company Check. Clair is Check’s first Earned Wage Access (EWA) partner and represents a milestone in its commitment to offering financial benefits. Through the integration, platforms using Check to build and launch their payroll businesses can seamlessly opt into offering Clair’s fully compliant, on-demand pay solution, without needing to build any software. Check works with dozens of category-leading platforms such as Novo, Homebase and Wave, paying hundreds of thousands of employees each month.
Check’s channel partner Eddy, an all-in-one HR suite for hiring, onboarding, managing, and paying employees, is the first to roll out access to Clair services through the Check API. Eddy will provide Clair’s on-demand pay services to thousands of employees across hundreds of businesses.
Clair and Check are launching this unique solution at a time when WFM systems are trying to modernize their approach to employee management to align with today’s digital workforce.
- More than half of employers (58%) say technology integration is one of the top areas of improvement for their payroll providers and another 29% say tech modernization is a top concern.
- Meanwhile, 68% of employees said they used financial wellness services provided by their employers in 2023, up from 51% in 2012, illustrating the growing demand and usage of these benefits.
To solve these pain points, Check partnered with Clair to bring its cutting-edge technology to Check partners, making it easy to offer financial benefits for their employees, by giving them access to their pay when they need it, before payday.
“As the needs of the modern workforce evolve, we’re constantly iterating on our products to provide experiences that employers need to future-proof their businesses,” said Kevin Hollingshead, head of partnerships at Check. “It’s clear to us that on-demand pay will only continue to grow in popularity. Clair is the innovator in this space, so it was a natural decision to partner to integrate their leading EWA solution into our partner offerings. We believe it will give our platforms a competitive edge in attracting and retaining the essential people who power their businesses.”
“By revolutionizing the way employers and HR platforms approach on-demand pay, we’re ushering in a new era of financial freedom and flexibility for workers,” said Nico Simko, co-founder and chief executive officer of Clair.
“Our pioneering technology streamlines the process of providing compliant wage advances, making us the trusted partner of choice for HR and payroll platforms at the forefront of modern finance. In partnership with Check, we’re ready to unlock new levels of satisfaction and productivity for companies that want to raise the bar on financial wellness benefits for their workforces.”
Clair offers access to its on-demand pay solutions to more than a dozen HR platform partners and has plans to continue its strategic partnerships with leaders in the payroll and benefits space, having already provided millions of dollars in wage advances. Clair’s fully compliant wage advance solution provides peace of mind for Clair partners, powered by its partnership with FDIC-insured national bank Pathward.
The partnership comes nearly exactly a year to the day since Clair raised $25m in funding.
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