Payroll Connectivity Firm Pinwheel Raises $50M

Payroll connectivity API firm Pinwheel says it’s preparing to expand after raising $50 million in a Series B funding round.

The New York-based firm announced the funding in a news release Tuesday (Jan. 18), saying it would use the money to triple its headcount to 180 workers, focusing on engineering roles. This will allow Pinwheel to continue work on its early wage access (EWA) efforts and explore new areas like tax preparation.

Pinwheel says its mission is “to help create a fairer financial system by providing an API that makes it easy for businesses to securely connect payroll accounts to their applications with consumer permission.”

Read also: MX Joins Forces with Pinwheel on Payroll Connectivity, Income Verification

This can help financial institutions provide equal access to services for everyone, including the bulk of Americans considered “financially unhealthy,” the firm said.

Among the tools offered by Pinwheel is real-time data about income that can be used to enable things like EWA, in which a person can get money as soon as they’ve earned in instead of having to wait for a paycheck.

“I’m particularly passionate about addressing the vicious cycle of paycheck-to-paycheck-living that plagues almost 80% of people in the United States, by developing products that will power EWA and dynamic lending opportunities,” said Kurtis Lin, co-founder and CEO of Pinwheel.

“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.”

The funding round was led GGV Capital, along with returning investors Coatue, First Round Capital, and Upfront Ventures, plus new investors that included AMEX Ventures, Indeed, Kraken Ventures and Franklin Templeton.

Last year, Pinwheel collaborated with the financial data platform MX to offer customs expanded coverage of income verification, improved financial guidance and better underwriting models for stronger lending decisions.