£1/month per employee cost for the business and £1.75 fixed fee per withdrawal cost for the employee.
Seems like a genuinely useful product. I’d rather this than the useless discount portal my company pays for.
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Lots of people live pay cheque to pay cheque, with not enough funds to effectively budget. On the surface this seems like a very useful facility for those people.
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I mostly agree but often people are forced to go to payday lending companies - that’s a difficult spiral to get out of. This seems like a much fairer option.
Isn’t this just an interest free overdraft?
It’s a good idea if used properly, like the transport to work example.
Ill agree its potentially better than payday loan companies. I think what worries me is the actual system to allow you to take money out early should be secondary to providing education and effective financial planning for the individual.
I think if this system heavily focuses on ensuring that what people do take out wont make them worse off next month, and help them plan for avoiding that first, before they take out money, then it will be a good thing and could probably do a lot of good.
No, because you’re not borrowing money. You’re paying to get a percentage of your wage before payday, and only on what you’ve already earned that period.
I guess, it’s very similar though. You’re paying a fee to get access to more money.
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No not really. You’re paying a fee to access your money, not someone else’s money, not more money, just your money early. there’s no loan, you don’t pay anyone back, there’s no requirement to pay the money back to your employer. Its simply your money.
Right you don’t pay it back, it just leaves you with less for next month
Yeah I can see it being a bit of a problem for some people. It’s not really teaching people how to budget or have discipline with their money 
I think being able to use the feature every month doesn’t quite work. Without thinking properly about it maybe a cap of 3/4 times a year would help people use it in emergencies or at least make them think more seriously when to withdraw. That might stop people withdrawing for nights out etc.
The fact that the BBCs articles second paragraph literally says this guy was taking money out for socialising doesn’t fill be with confidence that people are going to use this sensibly.
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The way I see it is you’re paying this company to lend you their money before your employer pays them back. They can do it with lower fees because they only lend you what they know you’ll have coming your way and the repayment won’t come from you but directly from your employer so there’s virtually 0 risk for them. So I see it as a payday loan with 0 risks for the lender and thus virtually no interest
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£1 a month plus £1.75 withdrawal fee soon mounts up esp. if the employees start using it multiple times per month… they don’t need to charge interest.
I guess I’m alright with it so long as it’s used responsibly. I wonder if the employer gets feedback as to how many times it’s used.
Honestly this seems like a really bad idea to me. I get some people struggle making money last the whole month so can see why it could work but I think a lot of the issues it’s trying to solve would be better solved by helping people become more financially aware, literate and involved in things like budgeting.
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My reasoning is that I think it’s better then the alternatives.
I would sooner Wagestream be something someone has to wean themselves off rather then a reliance on payday loans.
I struggle to see a future where financial education becomes truly mainstream, theres too much money invested by those that set the curriculum for financial education to ever get the airtime it deserves.
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I don’t think so, people with more money actually means people have more money to spend so if there was a conspiracy going on it’s not to make more money by not teaching people finance.
The problem is the BBC article specifically shows the opposite, this guy is using this for socialising of all things.
Wagestream is good. Took me a while to figure out why it divides my weekly wages by 7 and then spreads them over the week, even though I only work 2 days. I’d assume it’s so you know exactly how much you are earning every day ?
What is this costing you?
You could re-create it yourself if you get paid into a pot and then set an auto-transfer each day for 1/7th of your money.
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No thanks for myself far too much money to use.