Can Payday Loans Become Obsolete?
Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2025 3:11 am
He is Argentinian and Swiss and came to the USA to visit Harvard, where he met Nussbaumer. Finally, he worked at JP Morgan with a focus on the payments market. He kept in touch with Kostecki, their families are good friends, and the trio decided to tackle this issue, inspired in part by Uber’s instant pay feature, which was launched in 2016 and proved hugely successful.
Clair founders Alex Kostecki, Nico Simko, Erich Nussbaumer. Photo credits: Clair
, fees or tips, Clair wants to be the bank and financial service job function email database provider of choice for employees. As I noticed last week through Pinwheel, a payroll API platform, having a direct deposit relationship with a worker almost has the guarantee that they will be handling most of their financial transactions through that particular bank account.
Clair offers free instant payment advances as access to its other offerings, which include spending and savings accounts, a debit card, an in-app virtual debit card, and financial planning tools. Simko said, “Our business model is to give people free access to earned wages and then automatically enroll them in a digital bank.
In fact, he and the company believe in this model so much that it pays off as an incentive to integrate human capital technology platforms like workforce management and payroll systems. It provides a recurring source of income for HR tools based on the number of users joining Clair, regardless of how much those employees use the software. We are “really going down the thesis of embedded fintech,” said Simko. “Employees are starting to spend money on their Clair card and we are distributing that to ours [HR tech] Partner.”
Clair founders Alex Kostecki, Nico Simko, Erich Nussbaumer. Photo credits: Clair
, fees or tips, Clair wants to be the bank and financial service job function email database provider of choice for employees. As I noticed last week through Pinwheel, a payroll API platform, having a direct deposit relationship with a worker almost has the guarantee that they will be handling most of their financial transactions through that particular bank account.
Clair offers free instant payment advances as access to its other offerings, which include spending and savings accounts, a debit card, an in-app virtual debit card, and financial planning tools. Simko said, “Our business model is to give people free access to earned wages and then automatically enroll them in a digital bank.
In fact, he and the company believe in this model so much that it pays off as an incentive to integrate human capital technology platforms like workforce management and payroll systems. It provides a recurring source of income for HR tools based on the number of users joining Clair, regardless of how much those employees use the software. We are “really going down the thesis of embedded fintech,” said Simko. “Employees are starting to spend money on their Clair card and we are distributing that to ours [HR tech] Partner.”