How Reset is Bridging the Gap Between Banking and Payroll through Earned Wage Access

For millions of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck, waiting for payday to access the money they’ve earned can result in cashflow issues that put them in financial jeopardy. With limited options, they often turn to predatory lending companies or services with high fees.

Coming from first-generation and blue-collar families, the co-founders of Reset, Matt Dicou, Wes Rodriguez, and Brian Mascarenhas, saw these difficulties firsthand. “We realized that a major disparity in financial products is that they are not tailored to the lived reality of the vast majority of Americans, and we wanted to build Reset for families like ours,” says Matt Dicou, CEO and co-founder of Reset.

To solve this problem, a new category of financial products emerged called earned wage access. These products enable consumers to have immediate access to the money they’ve earned, without needing to wait for the next payroll cycle. With earned wage access products becoming increasingly popular, consumers are turning to FinTech brands that offer these products, decreasing account primacy with their traditional bank.

However, providing this solution no longer needs to just be something consumers turn to FinTechs for. Reset set out to build a flexible and fee-free earned wage access product that enables banks and credit unions to easily offer daily access to pay to their account holders directly. 

By partnering with Reset, financial institutions can drive deposit growth, increase interchange revenue, and improve their customer engagement. 

“Deposits are the lifeblood of any financial institution, with over $12.5 trillion per year in payroll, gig, and government assistance income paid out every year,” says Matt. “Reset’s innovation creates a gravitational pull for deposits that benefits a financial institution’s bottom line but also provides deep value to their customers.”

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A worker-first approach to earned wage access

Many earned wage access products on the market focus on enabling employers to offer this benefit to their employees. However, this approach becomes a fragmented experience for consumers as they move jobs or if they receive income from a variety of different sources. This ultimately makes it difficult for them to truly benefit their long-term financial health. 

Recognizing that consumers get paid in a variety of different ways, Reset designed their product in a way that is both employer-portable and works with multiple income sources such as government benefits, gig work, and more. By making waiting for payday a thing of the past, regardless of where that income is earned, Reset smooths out a consumer’s income and allows them to self-optimize their finances.

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Building Reset

To build this solution, Reset needed to find the right partners that would equip them with the technology infrastructure and sponsor bank connection necessary to build a banking and card product. 

“We evaluated potential partners in the same way I’d suggest others do, based on speed, economics, and the technological capabilities of the partner and their platform,” says Matt. “Synctera represented the best mix of all three.”

Matt also cited the transparency and support Synctera was able to offer throughout the implementation process, with multiple team members available to guide them through the build process. “That was critical for us in terms of getting from idea to actual product,” said Matt.

With Synctera, Reset was able to access all of the infrastructure and tech components they needed to build their product. Additionally, Synctera connected Reset with a sponsor bank and provided the structure they needed to build a collaborative relationship together. 

“Our sponsor bank has been amazing to work with. They were gracious enough to join us for our launch event, and have been available whenever we need them. I can reach senior leadership anytime I have a question,” says Matt.

Earlier in 2024, Reset successfully launched their earned wage access product that enables banks and credit unions to offer their customers an income-linked card, giving consumers the ability to immediately spend their accrued earnings. 

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What’s next for Reset

Post-launch, Reset has seen how earned wage access products can benefit consumers across all income levels. 

“We have learned a lot about how earned wage access is helpful even at higher income levels, and seen strong interest across income types,” says Matt. “Reset’s flexibility to support payroll, gig workers, government benefits, and military service members has been powerful in terms of people finding us and feeling like we are the only solution that covers them and their specific situation.”

Reset is currently live with a large credit union and will continue to enable banks and credit unions to offer earned wage access products to their customers. Reset intends to seamlessly bring the banking and payroll systems closer together to make a significant impact in the lives of working Americans.

“If you picture a Venn diagram, and one circle is the banking system and the other is payroll, right now they only interact through direct deposit. We are pushing those circles closer together,” says Matt. “We are building for a future where everyone has fee-free access to their pay immediately as it is earned directly in their bank account.”