Pinwheel

78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and more than half have a poor credit score or no score at all. Without access affordable financial products, they resort to predatory products like payday loans, high-interest rate credit cards, and overdraft fees to make ends meet. After the short-term relief, these predatory products ultimately push people further into deeper cycles of debt.

Pinwheel is building a fairer financial system by unlocking API access to payroll systems. Most people’s money can be traced back to a payroll system (e.g. ADP, Paychex, Gusto, etc). This makes payroll systems incredibly powerful because they 1) harbor valuable income and employment data and 2) sit at the top of the financial stack, with the controls that determine where your paycheck goes and how it gets split up before anyone else has a say.

Unfortunately, the payroll ecosystem is largely closed and highly fragmented, disconnected from the banks, lenders, and service providers that could benefit from access to it. By building the pipes that aggregate and unlock these payroll systems, Pinwheel helps consumers access better, cheaper financial products when they need them most while also sparking innovation of new financial products.

We're backed by First Round Capital, Upfront Ventures, and other top-tier investors and angels. Our founding team has decades of leadership experience at leading tech firms like Google, Zynga & Groupon, and a successful track record at startups like Luxe & Zocdoc. Our advisory team is made up of the brightest minds and leaders from fintechs like Square, Stripe, Intuit, Venmo, Wealthfront, Cash App, LendUp, Acorns and more.

To learn more, check out our CEO's blog post: https://bit.ly/2Z3ArUE, our TechCrunch launch announcement: https://tcrn.ch/3izhxwv, and give us a shout at hello@getpinwheel.com!