Pinwheel Now Supplies Income and Employment Data Through Visa Program

Pinwheel has partnered with Visa to provide consumer-permissioned income and employment data to businesses.

By joining the Visa Fintech Connect Program , Pinwheel can provide this data to merchants, financial institutions and FinTech companies more easily and with additional security and compliance, the companies said in a Wednesday (March 29) press release .

“We’re excited to be able to connect more directly with the FinTechs and financial institutions in Visa’s ecosystem to help them take advantage of our leading income and employment data connectivity,” Pinwheel Chief Revenue Officer Lauren Crossett said. “Our mission is to create a fairer financial system, and teaming up with Visa will allow us to reach more customers that can build products and services that better serve consumers.”

Pinwheel provides its real-time data to customers via an application programming interface (API). It helps them make sense of the data by applying analytics and intelligence, according to the press release.

Financial institutions and FinTechs use the data to enable direct deposit switching, earned wage access and other innovative products, the release said.

For example, gaining visibility into consumers’ employment data and accessing their primary accounts can “go a long way into understanding whether this is someone you want to underwrite or not,” Pinwheel Founder and CEO Kurtis Lin told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster in an interview posted in January 2022.

APIs from companies like Pinwheel offer banks and digital-first companies a simpler way to connect to payroll systems as they seek ways to offer customers products that match customers’ needs, Lin said at the time.

The Visa Fintech Partner Connect Program brings together participants that are certified by Visa, trusted by the global payments ecosystem, and helpful in building and launching payment solutions, according to the Wednesday press release.

“Today, consumers want seamless interactions across mobile and web, and access to a greater suite of digital banking capabilities,” Vanessa Colella , senior vice president and global head of innovation and digital partnerships at Visa, said in the release. “With Pinwheel participating in the Fintech Partner Connect program, our clients will have access to a powerful set of tools for building new digital-first experiences.”

The program was launched in Europe in 2020 and rolled out to the United States and several other markets in May 2021.