Pinwheel raises $50m in Series B to help create “fairer financial system”

Pinwheel, a payroll data connectivity platform, has raised $50 million in a Series B round led by GGV Capital, with continued participation from Coatue, First Round Capital, and Upfront Ventures.

Pinwheel raises $50m

Strategic partners including AMEX Ventures, Indeed, Kraken Ventures, and Franklin Templeton provided new investments.

New York-based Pinwheel says its mission is “to help create a fairer financial system” by providing an API that allows businesses to connect payroll accounts to their applications.

“By establishing this layer of income connectivity, fintechs, financial institutions, and more can develop new tools or services that provide equitable access to financial services for everyone, including the 67% of Americans who are considered to be financially unhealthy,” the company says.

Pinwheel’s data coverage spans nearly 80% of people employed in the US, making it “the industry’s most comprehensive level of data, from traditional forms of income and work via payroll systems for the top 500 employers, to a burgeoning ecosystem of less traditional income and work such as gig and creator economy platforms”, it claims.

The data is also provided in real-time, covering not just scheduled direct deposits for salaried employees but also hourly clock-ins, which can be used to enable offerings such as earned wage access (EWA).

Pinwheel’s customers include Block (formerly Square), Varo, Lendly, and Daylight.

The platform executes over 4.6 million processes per month, a 400x increase from the previous year, according to the vendor. Last year, it increased its annual recurring revenue by 177x.

Co-founder and CEO Kurtis Lin says the new funding will help the firm “to rapidly scale and introduce new solutions that will change finance as we know it”.

“I’m particularly passionate about addressing the vicious cycle of paycheck-to-paycheck-living,” Lin states.

“I look forward to a world where people are proactively offered new terms of payment for a personal loan should they lose their job, or earlier access to their paycheck in a time of crisis instead of facing payday loan sharks.”

Pinwheel plans to triple its headcount to 180 people, with emphasis on engineering roles, to continue work on EWA and to expand into new areas such as tax preparation.