Trunk Tools Raises $9 Million for Faster Construction Pay

Construction-focused FinTech Trunk Tools has raised $9 million to help workers get paid faster.

The company’s seed round, announced Thursday (July 13), comes at a time when instant payroll is becoming increasingly important to workers.

“The manufacturing and construction industries have grappled with a labor shortage and productivity crisis that Trunk Tools is solving,” founder and Chief Executive Dr. Sarah Buchner said in a news release.

She noted that job openings in the construction space are at a record high, with 4 in 10 craft workers expected to retire in the next five years.

“The construction and manufacturing industries must become more competitive employers in an environment where skilled labor is in increasingly short supply. This funding will enable us to deliver software and business solutions to help construction employers make on-site labor work more productive, safer, and rewarding.”

According to the release, Trunk Tools provides an all-in-one platform for construction firms to help employees access part of their wages daily at no extra cost.

In addition, the company’s platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help managers create productivity goals and safety rewards, while letting workers check upcoming and current tasks, check their balances and review transactions from their phones.

Delaying paychecks can be hugely detrimental for workers, with 71% saying they’d experience at least some difficulty if their pay was held back for any reason.

And employees won’t hesitate to leave a workplace that has payroll issues, according to one recent survey that found that 97% of Canadian workers would seek out other employment if their paychecks were regularly late, while 91% reported that they would look for new jobs if their pay was inaccurate.

“Faster payments are top-of-mind for both businesses and consumers, with 83% and 75%, respectively, using some form of real-time transactions,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this week.

Businesses say the most common use case is payroll, with 57% using faster payment tech to pay their employees. Forty-five percent of businesses expect instant payroll to reduce their costs, and just under three-quarters said receiving automated payment-related information via this method is at least somewhat important.

Meanwhile, recent research finds that construction firms are investing more and more into technology, with 30% of firms preparing for a possible recession by focusing on tech to save time and costs.

That’s according to the January/February edition of the “B2B and Digital Payments Tracker®,” a PYMNTS and American Express joint effort.

Those investments include technology to accelerate payments, reduce financing costs and streamline back-office processes, “solutions that address common problems in the construction industry,” PYMNTS wrote.