Payroll Startup Check Raises $75M in Stripe-Led Series C

Check, a payroll infrastructure company, announced Wednesday (Feb. 16) that it raised $75 million in a Series C round led by Stripe.

The funding round also saw participation from existing investors Bedrock, Thrive and Index.

Check’s services allow for platforms to put payroll services in their products. The company publicly launched in January 2021, and has partnered with companies in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), workforce management, financial services and staffing businesses.

Check reportedly offers what companies need to “build, launch, and scale a payroll product, including Check’s intuitive API; Components, which enable flexible and customizable solutions; and a user-friendly customer management dashboard,” which is called Console.

According to the release, payroll, powered by Check, offers a simplified solution for businesses, making is so that data does not need to be synced to a standalone payroll provider.

“The last decade has made it clear that the democratization of infrastructure can lead to explosive innovation,” Check co-founder and CEO Andrew Brown said in the release. “It’s humbling seeing how — in just a year — platforms serving millions of employees across the country have chosen to work with Check. With this new injection of funding, we’re excited to accelerate our efforts to simplify how businesses pay their employees.”

PYMNTS wrote that the structure of payroll comes down to how individuals receive paychecks for what they do at work — which has become increasingly complex with the gig economy and eCommerce sales.

Read more: Pinwheel CEO: Payroll Connectivity Gives Lenders View Into Consumer’s Total ‘Income Stack’

There’s a growing number of consumers — 57%, according to a recent PYMNTS survey — who live paycheck to paycheck, which has made it more difficult for people to deal with various life expenses. That has seen a rise of new digital solutions such as earned wage access and other kinds of products, along with traditional lending.

Pinwheel founder and CEO Kurtis Lin has said that lenders’ underwriting activities have been still rooted in “static snapshots” of checking accounts. That could be improved with more visibility into employment data, offering more info on whether the person is someone the company wants to loan to.