Driving Our Economy Forward: Clockout
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- It’s an earned-wage access model that is growing in our area. Tonight, we are learning how hourly employees can get faster access to their paychecks. Clock-out is this week’s Driving our Economy Forward.
Vladimir Dumitrean, Co-Founder, “Clock up provides cash when you need it, if you’ve already earned it without having to wait for payday. So, imagine that you know I’ve already earned my cash, and I keep for the for the day. And I need cash right this moment. Maybe to put food on the table for my kids, or maybe to pay that extra bill that was that, that I wasn’t expecting.
Dumitrean also said, “And I have already finished my shift for the day. I earned my 100 plus dollars and maybe I need it right now. I can’t wait two weeks. Maybe it’s an emergency today.”
Juan Jurado-Blanco, Co-Founder also said, “We knew that our solution was vital. A vital financial service for a lot of workers very early on. Our early users found her platform, very useful.”
Jurado-Blanco continued, “And because they needed, they couldn’t make ends meet before their next paycheck. One of them was, her name was Use Bailey. She was a barista at one of our local coffee shops where we had her platform, and, she had no car, and she couldn’t make ends meet to even get back to work. So, she used her already earned wages to get Ubers to go back home, go to the grocery store and get back to work and earn money to continue her day-to-day expenses, actually.”
Anthony Tardugno, Co-Founder said, “So, we’re originally from Florida, region affected by many, many hurricanes. And I remember that at one point, in one of the near one of the hurricanes, we were receiving hundreds and hundreds of messages of people asking for our service because they needed to pay for shorter for their homes. They needed to pay for sandbags so their houses wouldn’t be flooded with the hurricanes.”
Tardugno continued to say, “So that opened up a whole new perspective on this service, that it’s not only to day-to-day expenses, but also for things that we wouldn’t even conceive. That can happen, you know, and these people that needed this money weren’t able to access our service because we were working with employers at that time. And now with our new service that goes with the banks and credit unions, everyone that works will be able to access this. And there are not going to be any other hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, eggs or any other Mother Nature, situation in which these people are not backed by clock out.”
Jurado-Blanco ended by saying, “We learned that, you know, financial institutions aren’t in the technology business, they’re in the finance business, and that they don’t build their own tech solutions. And we found it quite impressive that 73% of bank account holders would use a bank offer, earn a wage access solution, but they haven’t really met this demand because they don’t have the infrastructure to do it. And that’s essentially what we did. So, we took all of our learnings in the past two years. The programs really built, and we started integrating into, you know, the bank and credit union systems that they use. And now we’re here today.”
