In the world of technology, it seems for a category to truly stand out and earn the ultimate title of “disruptive,” it first must go through a few other nomenclature-related steps. First, it’s defined as a trend, then an innovation, then as a penultimate step. It’s awarded a unique category name. While the name is more hype than substance in some instances, in other cases, it’s a distinct category worthy of its own label. One such category is Paytech. Like its older sibling, Fintech, it’s built on a simple combination of payments and technology. As it has grown, it’s changed how people, businesses, employers, and many other parties in a transaction, transact.
To earn disruptor status, a company or a category must look at a legacy system, find ways to deconstruct it, and ultimately rebuild it in a way that considers users’ needs now versus when it was created. One key example is in the world of payroll. Despite being driven by a group of global companies, many key functions and data sources remain disparate. Several legacy systems make what, on the surface, may seem like a simple change is actually harder than it appears, ultimately making the rules that drive the system unfair for many involved.
When Anish Basu, Curtis Lee, and Kurt Lin built a company to provide employees with pre-tax benefits transit and healthcare accounts, they ran into a small problem. They learned there was no simple way to offer their product to the handful of large companies that dominate the payroll space. Seeing this challenge and several other legacy brick walls drove the group to found Pinwheel in 2018. The company’s mission is “to build a fairer financial system by unlocking access to payroll.”
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