Wage announced a $5 million Seed round of venture capital funding for its payroll data API. Wage hopes to empower employees’ lives with streamlined access to verified payroll and employment data giving them more control of their financial profile and gaining more access to financial services. The “wage network” is offered to payroll providers when then provide the service as a benefit for employers teams.
Today the Wage network is sharing more than 2,500 payroll data attributes in the 50 US states across 17,000 employers and 31 million employees.
Wage is entering a competitive field largely made up of hybrid tech/service providers who along with compensation and employment verification are normally providing myriad other verifications related to employment. The verification itself can be largely manual for the current or previous employer verifying the data.
It’s an interesting model. One that brings opportunities and concerns to mind. Once this data is shared in the Wage network it can become a powerful source of insights to marketers and advertisers. Wage even compares itself to a consumer credit check. Probably a good analogy. Credit scores fuel an incredible amount of marketing and advertising. Gradient Ventures, who Google positions as its “AI-focused venture fund,” led this round of investment.
There are other players in the market including payroll providers that could see this opportunity and seize it. Given that data is the currency here, what would stop the leading global payroll providers from offering a targeted API for this purpose with consumer/employee control? This would extend the value of the payroll service and give a quick win to their customer’s HR teams.
Of course, there’s also an elephant in the room: Blockchain.
It will be interesting to watch the payroll industry with this one.
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Source: Wage Secures $5M to Scale Credential-less Payroll Data API