Every Workday Is Payday in an Instant

Narrator 0:05

This is Wage to Wallet, a podcast by PYMNTS. In collaboration with Ingo Money and WorkWhile, we break down how America's hourly workforce powers the real economy, from paycheck to GDP. In this episode, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster sits down with Ingo Payments CEO Drew Edwards and WorkWhile COO Simon Khalaf to discuss how liquidity stress splits higher earners and the labor economy.

Karen Webster 0:34

Hey Simon, hey Drew, thanks for joining me today for another one of our Wage to Wallet podcasts. We have a whole interesting slate of questions to walk through using our latest data as sort of the conversation anchor point. So appreciate the time and thanks for making it for the conversation today.

Simon Khalaf 0:55

Thank you for having us.

Karen Webster 0:57

Okay, so just as just to make sure everyone is on the same page with Wage to Wallet and what this is all about. This is a research initiative, Payments Intelligence and Work While and Ingo Payments that really digs into how workers receive their pay and how quickly and efficiently those wages move into everyday spending, savings, and bill payment activities. We look at wage volatility by measuring fluctuation in income timing and amounts, and we look at how those swings affect liquidity, financial stress, ability to meet obligations, and so forth. But we have a particular focus on how innovations in payment and workforce management really help this labor economy workforce improve their cash flow predictability and access. And in so doing, the impact that it makes on the local economies in which they live and work. So, with that as a backdrop, I want to start with some of the findings that really dig into this notion of the speed of pay having as much impact on how workers in the labor economy feel or define what they what they believe is a good job. Would you both agree with the fact that this growing demand for end-of-shift or same-day pay really reshaping how these workers now define what a good job really means? Simon, I'll start with you.

Simon Khalaf 2:36

Erin, I would say for sure, uh it is very clear that on our platform, uh, I'd say instant pay or real-time pay has become a must. We have 91% penetration and it's going up and up and up. And uh it comes down to basics. Cash flow is everything these days. And and uh the labor economy's inability to get access to what I'd say low interest rate loans uh is making this even more of a priority. So absolutely, absolutely, yes. It is that's what the definition of a good job is, is the one that pays them the same day.

Karen Webster 3:18

It's really interesting because that is that was never really much of a criteria for a good job. But Drew, your your thoughts on how that has now influenced sort of the psychology of what it means to have a good job and work for an employer that offers those good jobs.

Drew Edwards 3:38

Yeah, I look, I I know we're talking about this as a um sort of a shift or a transformation in the market, and the numbers from the research are certainly showing that. It's what's odd to me is it's been like this for the whole 25 years I've been in business because we've, you know, cash checks. And so before work while and all of these uh fintechs and other solutions came along to help you know accelerate pay, these very consumers lined up at uh check cashers or Walmart or Kroger across the country to get their funds faster and more safely from when they did get a piece of paper. So the big shift for me is not about this need that that speed matters and good funds matters and the timing matters. It's that now instead of having a check once a week to go cash and accelerate, if that was a problem, they waited a week and they need it right now, and it wasn't because they didn't have a bank account, then you look at the 91% penetration that Simon has got on his platform, it's just screaming that you know they must have been dying for a week before. But speed and access to the pay from a job, for most of these workers, they're not they're not doing these jobs because they grew up with a passion to be a landscaper or to work in a warehouse or to do whatever. It's they're living paycheck to paycheck, or or I I loved your post, doing Bill Roulette and trying to make all that work and in an increasingly tight market. So yeah, I I personally think that a job that pays once a week or once every two weeks is a terrible job for this worker.

Karen Webster 5:41

What when when when you think about the innovations now that make the every workday, a payday, a reality? So that, I mean, to your point, Drew, it's not about getting a check for a week's worth of work and then and then cashing it that same day. It's it's getting paid for the work that was done that particular shift. Um what does that what does that mean for a platform like Workwhile Simon? And what does that mean for employers who may be struggling with trying to align every day as a payday with the reality of how their their business and their payroll is set up?

Simon Khalaf 6:28

Actually, I I do have to violently agree with Drew about this problem, it has existed for a while, but no one talked about it. Look, we are dominated by the passion and glory and failures of Wall Street. And honestly, no one talks about Main Street. Now, now, as AI is coming after Wall Street jobs, all of them are in panic from Davos all the way to Wall Street, where I'm actually sitting right now. And so the same thing that happened to our workers is gonna happen to what I call more highly paying jobs. That's number one. Uh so it matters a lot because if you're not paid daily, you're actually taking a 20 and 30% discount because it means you're borrowing in order to live between paycheck to paycheck, and you're borrowing at very high APRs. So I don't believe it's gonna be a luxury or a perk anymore. It is gonna be either that or I'm not gonna work for this. That's why on our platform, I'm I'm and I would love to ask every employer in the United States, pay your workers daily. What it means, it's higher working capital for companies, like sorry, working capital cost for ourselves. But you know what? It is something we have to do. It is part of who we are. It's not expensive. Let's say we're borrowing at prime plus 20 basis points. So, okay, call that 6%. Okay. We don't need to mark that up 11 times in order to create a payday loan. I would rather take that and pay it and give our workers financial stability because we're no longer in a zero interest rate environment, because everybody is in debt, because the cost of debt is high, because the federal government is in debt, because the states are in debt, the cities are in debt, and the consumers are in debt. So the idea that all of a sudden the feds are gonna drop rates 100 basis points and it's gonna trickle down to consumers is something history books are not gonna talk about. So it is up to the employees and it sorry, the employers and the platforms to do the job that governments and the feds should do, which is pay your workers daily. And I think it is gonna become a must. And I'm not saying it because we're offering it, I'm seeing it with our workers. There are tons of shifts that do that basically, if you don't say it pays immediately, people are flying over them. They would rather not work because they know that a job that will pay immediately is posted. So I think it's gonna become a must.

Karen Webster 9:09

So, Simon, where what what are some of those jobs where you see that friction being so significant in the eyes of the employee that the employer has to comply? I mean, because not I would imagine not every not every job, not every industry sector, maybe not even every region or economy across the US experiences the same friction. So where are you seeing it the highest?

Simon Khalaf 9:36

Yeah, I mean, I mean, from we have definitely a narrower view of the market based on the industries and the regions we serve. But we do have the reason why we're not at 100% today, is not that we don't want to be at 100%, nor our workers don't want to be at 100, 100%, but there are jobs that we require review. So you've done let's say you have commitments. I'm just gonna use example, an accountant. Let's say that you take a job as an accountant, it's not gonna pay you at the end of your shift because somebody has to review whether you've done the right accounting and then decide whether. But once we get the notification from the employer, we pay our people immediately. So, but we disclose that in the in the job, saying, look, you will be paid uh when somebody approves your shift, and that could take up to 48 hours versus instant pay. So so for 9% of these, we are seeing less pickup than something that would take uh uh instant pay after the shift is done without uh what I'd say managerial review in all sectors. In all sectors.

Karen Webster 10:40

Are you also seeing that? I mean, I we we see that in some of the data that we've worked on together about you know different sectors like transportation and project-based work, where there is this measure of review that does that does that does have to be done in order for a payment to be to be initiated instantly.

Drew Edwards 11:01

No, I don't have good visibility into that, uh, other than at a more macro level. So remember, a lot of the uh the ingo payout use cases are gaming and insurance and lending and places where there's not this review cycle or or clock in, clock out cycle, etc. Uh but the the same what we're seeing is the the our very first use case in push the card was lending and it's still there. And so the the the itch, the notion that I need this money and I need it now, and I need it to be real and and safe to spend funds that starts in some of these other adjacent use cases where we play. Um we have this whole industry, the entire payday loan industry, and uh which is sort of evolved out now, but and the the entire early wage access and earn wage access industry is just testament to um this daily pay and the speed of this stuff matters, but I don't have visibility into some of the layers you're asking about. We do see still from our the check side of our business, transactional payroll happening every day. I went out there before we did this interview just to get a feel for what we what kinds of industries we're seeing out there. And um, I came back with you know, business to consumer payments are our biggest category, and industries like hairdressers, landscapers, moving people, and believe it or not, still fast food workers, which that one still puzzles me a little bit, right? Uh and that was just a small sampling, but anywhere, I guess that's what I was trying to say on the first question. Anywhere the moment happens where a consumer gets paid, we're the probably the biggest check casher in America. So we immediately see what happens the moment they get paid. And I used to watch it when we had our El Bonco branches. So the notions just following through now to, oh, if you're gonna give me, well, let's go back one more cycle. When when Uber and Lyft originally said, hey, we'll pay you out, you know, as many times a day as you want, and they started seeing drivers getting paid not once a day, but after every ride or every few rides, you know, these same metrics now are just being made available to a broader group of people through platforms like Simon's, right? So if they're solving for the rest of the equation, which is that point of payment, then you watch what 91% of the time Simon's customers are going, yeah, give it to me every day, give it to me even faster, right? So I guess all I'm saying is this need for speed on pay, whether it's I did a, you know, I cleaned out your backyard for you or I'm working at an Amazon warehouse, it's built in, and the faster you can pay them. I think the Uber folks proved that if you can pay them every hour, they would do that, which is not necessary, obviously, in that scenario.

Karen Webster 14:24

Simon, I I I want to talk about the the data center demand that you're seeing, because one of the last conversations we had, you you mentioned that there's there's such a demand for workers in certain geographies to build data centers to support um AI. And and you mentioned what that was doing to the average wage paid. But I'm curious, how does speed of payment factor into the ability to attract a workforce to support those kinds of projects?

Simon Khalaf 15:00

I I don't believe on its own, it does, is it does impact us. Uh you you have to look at we're always balancing a supply and demand. And the the interesting thing about data centers is that they are hyper-local. So you're not, let's say you're booting something up in Nevada, you're not gonna, the massive data center that you have four weeks to actually get plumbing, to get cooling, uh, to get power, uh uh uh uh to get uh framing, roofing done, you're not gonna fly people from New York, right? You have to look at local resources. And it's not that, you know, that birth uh or uh reaching uh working age works as fast as AI. So that creates labor shortage. So labor shortage is means you gotta pay higher, but you're also sucking the oxygen from other industries. So warehousing, 3PM, logistics, delivery uh all suffer and they have to compete. So it is driving wages up. But I don't believe that the instant pay is making a difference other than the wages are going up because of what I call the AI construction boom.

Karen Webster 16:18

Yeah, interesting. Do you do you do you think that when workers are paid at the end of every shift, um, that that that that changes how they look at there's no more monthly budget, there's a daily budget. I mean, how how are workers adapting to a different pay cycle, Simon and Drew, from from from your experiences, what you what you see?

Simon Khalaf 16:42

Yeah, well, I mean, I I'm happy to start. Unfortunately, they don't have a budget. And and and I think I think our nation, right, has at like if it's up to me, I would pass a balanced budget amendment for the feds, the states, the city, and the households, right? I think we we have all started living beyond our means, and we just simply don't know how to balance payables and receivables, unfortunately. So uh what what is happening here? Because the bills are now coming electronically, you get to see them electronically. So you get the urge to pay them electronically versus you have to open your mailbox once a week and see them. So so the same way that you are you are expecting to get paid in a streaming manner, your bills are coming in a streaming manner. So it is this that accessibility that is driving the urge versus uh balancing the budget. It is kind of technology that's driving the behavior versus economy that is driving the the behavior. I do believe this will change. It is on me, it is on our platform, it's on our engineers. I'm challenging them that by the end of this year, I do not want humans involved in paying bills. You gotta balance supply and demand, you gotta balance receivable, which is your job with payables. And the machine can do it beautifully because it recognizes the number zero and it recognizes that a 15% interest is a bad thing. So we will take that away from them as a service, because it is actually something that a genetic AI can do, uh, because the data is there, the technology is there, and the number zero is a very easy number uh to remember for machines. While we have trained folks that it is okay, once you are in debt, to continue to receive rewards, and that drives me crazy. That drives me crazy. Credit card companies are rewarding people to go into further debt, and that has to stop. So I think you've got two things going here. You got technology that makes bills and money available instantaneously, right? And then you have a genic, which can balance those two. And last but not least, you have you have a fracture in the credit card and unsecured debt economy that that that is making their traditional models not work. All three will come together in order for us to balance uh ahead ahead of households budget.

Karen Webster 19:22

Well, having leverage isn't a bad thing, Simon. I mean, I think people use credit, they often use credit responsibly to to manage the gaps in in pay and and and and and bill payment, because it's hard, it's hard to it's hard to align when you get paid, even if you're paid daily, with when the bills have to be paid and how much those bills are. So I don't I don't know that credit is a bad thing. It's how people manage credit that that can get them into trouble, right?

Simon Khalaf 19:52

There's nothing wrong with credit at all. That's how that's how humanity has worked. What is wrong is extremely high interest rates, right, that are way, way punitive because of portable risk management, number one. Number two is uh the ability to charge what is referred to as high risk customers, a higher interest rate in order to fund free working capital for the wealthy and for the upper 10% to leverage. That's what I'm challenging. I'm not challenging at all the value of credit. On the contrary, I am valuing, I am challenging the high interest rate because of perceived risk, which does not exist in the age of AI.

Drew Edwards 20:45

Yeah, I got a different point of view on all this. And I don't uh I'm sure before I say anything, Simon, there's no absolutes, right? So nothing is all one way or all the other. But I think we're at least based on my experience around underserved consumers and well-served consumers this last 20 or 30 years, uh the notion of the price, the cost of credit is not related to whether or not these people are transactional workers or salaried workers. In fact, I think the data, different study, but I think the data will show you that in the payday loan industry, in the credit card industry, in the subprime industry, that they are equally weighted across income spectrum, right? So they have people that are living paycheck to paycheck making $40,000 a year, and people that are living paycheck to paycheck making $400,000 a year. So the very notion of transactional payroll does not conclude that these people are high credit risk, high cost credit people. Or unable to budget, I see quite the opposite in our business and over the last years, that there are people within my transactional world that budget really well and people that budget really poorly. And there are people on my executive team that budget really well and budget poorly, right? So um the the I think I would disconnect the two. I I am not calling your examples inaccurate. I am questioning whether they are cause and effect, whether they are representative of this, right? So when when we see people cashing checks or paying for speed or paying Uber to get their money faster, or paying PayPal an extra 1.75% to get that money faster, that may very well be a very high credit, high-functioning worker that's that's just managing their zero, so to speak, transaction by transaction, bill by bill. That's actually the way Dave Ramsey teaches people to do it, right? That are in trouble from a budgeting standpoint, is know where you're gonna pay your your, you know, you line your bills up, know how you're gonna earn the money for each of them, in that case, put it in envelopes. And what this workwile and other uh platforms like this are doing is removing the need for the envelope. And I watched this in our branches back 20 years ago when we were El Bonco, where they walked in with a bill and a check from a job that day and they paid it. That does not mean they were high risk or poor planners or poor budgeters. It means they were just 20 years ahead of the cycle. And now we're talking about workers that might have more in savings than all three of us on this call, but they're going, This is great. I've got bills coming in every day, and I've got pay coming in every day. And that way I know out of my cash flow, like a small business, I can pay this bill. And if you make me wait two weeks, then it's like a small business is getting slow paid by a big client, and that causes problems. But so paying every day fixes a lot of these problems for the people that can budget and for the people that cannot budget. That's my only point.

Karen Webster 24:26

I I I agree. I also agree with that. And I and I do think that you know the the the use of buy now pay later as working capital because it's a payment plan, it's a predictable payment plan over shorter duration, can also help um all consumers manage the the pay to bill pay requirements that that everyone faces. I I I do I do see buy now pay later and those those schemes as becoming more of a working capital um opportunity for or tool for consumers. And I do I do think I agree with Drew in that um it isn't necessarily about about income. It is about paycheck to paycheck by choice, because you do have limitations in terms of what's coming in and and and what's required going out that that creates tension because utilities are more expensive, rent may be more expensive, food may be more expensive, and there isn't as much discretionary left over to work with versus paycheck to paycheck by choice, because people are sending their kids to private school and maybe they live in more expensive zip codes where um the cost of housing and the cost of transportation is more expensive. So I I think there's just a lot of variability into how how how people's paychecks get get managed and how credit um and payment products like that can help can help smooth the um the cash flow, the cash flow requirements.

Drew Edwards 26:09

And if I can add one more thing, I want to make sure I'm not misrepresenting. I uh clearly budgeting is critical. Uh I every one of the largest payday lenders in America were my clients before they all kind of went um out of business or got out of that part of the business, right? But here's here's what I think we're missing. Um, what's driving the need, what was driving the need for a payday loan, remember that doesn't that doesn't increase your cash flow. It what's driving that need was unexpected expenses, or if they're poor budgeters, they spent more money than they knew was coming in, right? And so when you move to a daily pay, you get it's much it's it's it's hard for uh anybody uh to save on a two-week cycle to pay a 30-day cycle of bills, right? And when you move that to daily, it gets easier. Now there has to be a discipline there to save for the bigger payment that's gonna take more than one day of work, and they still need that envelope for that, right? But moving the velocity to daily just makes the job of budgeting so much easier. That's what I'm trying to get at, right? And I and I watch that play out. So I think the magic here, in my opinion, is not making them budget across a whole month, make them budget across days. So they got a bill laying there on their table or in their email, and they know exactly how much they need to work to pay that bill. And the beauty of transactional work and the work while platform to me is they can just decide to work more to pay that bill this week, right? I'm gonna work four extra days or I'm gonna work longer because I've got rent due, right? And I think that gets lost on a two-week and a 30-day cycle, and it's really hard for people to do that.

Simon Khalaf 28:13

But yeah, I mean, I mean, I I actually agree a lot that that honestly visibility and frequency give you more control, not less control. Because let's say if you are on a daily basis down by a dollar and a half, you will be down in $15 in 10 days, but you can stop it, the bleeding on day two. And I agree with you, Drew, that that if if the tools are easy to use, they will they will behave. Like, but on a two-week basis, right, and on a monthly basis, it is hard to do that. So no, I I agree with you. I didn't I didn't mean that that that that that they are poor budgeters. You have poor budgeters and you have good budgeters. What I mean is if you look at the debt serving that is borne by the hourly wage is significantly higher than the others. And because of the the increase in interest rates, that has created an expense pressure in addition to the fast uh cost of uh non-discretionary spending, including gas and including food. That was something that was not anticipated, because the uh the effective inflation on this community is much higher than the 2.7% that is publicly disclosed. It is like like like inflation doesn't factor in interest rate cost, which is one of the huge, huge uh uh costs that that somebody who's in debt pays.

Karen Webster 29:57

Yeah, and it also doesn't take into consideration that you know what things used to cost are a whole lot more. So even if inflation slows, it's on top of costs that are so much higher, 20 to 25% higher than they were a couple of years ago, which also creates the the the the the disconnect. But but it if if we have um the tools available and we have this population of labor economy workers that will increase as physical labor becomes more valuable because machines can't do the work of physical labor yet, um what are the opportunities for innovating in this workforce environment so that not only are we giving more visibility, but we're providing better tools to not just make the bills um whole at the end of a day or a shift or a week or a month, but there's the opportunity to create savings as well.

Simon Khalaf 30:57

I I think I would love I love what Drew has said. He kind of articulated that that balance between making money to pay the bills and working. And I think it comes down to work hard and play hard, not play hard and then work less. So what I mean by that is bills are gonna come. So if we give you the visibility and say, look, what is your goal this month to cover all the bills and also go on vacation? These are the shifts you need to take. Our systems can do that. And I think if we get it's just this simple mathematical formula, get ahead of the expenses, right? And if we can tie that to finding the job for them that will deliver on this, I think that would be a great win for us in 2026. Um honestly, I did have our all hands today, and this is what I what I talked about, which is machines are capturing the intelligence of our best scientists, including but not excluding Marie Curie, Einstein, and what have you. They still cannot fold laundry. Right? Imagine you're gonna have seven Einsteins in your pocket at the cost of $200 a year called Google Gemini, right? That can solve any mathematical equation, right? They still cannot wash a dish. So which means that you're gonna see a boom, a boom in in what I call human dexterity, necessary labor, right? But we have to make sure that we complement that boom with removing all the inefficiencies in in the marketplace. So I think there's two things. One is how do we a how do we balance the payables and receivables for humans in order to generate this wealth? And the second one is how do we redistribute the jobs, right, that AI is gonna eliminate. This is actually a phenomenal opportunity, which could be a short-term pain, but it's gonna be a dramatic long-term gain, in which it will drive the the contrary to what I think Ken Griffith said this morning, I think or yesterday, said we're gonna see double-digit or we're gonna see 10% GDP growth, but close to 40% unemployment. I would rather uh we see uh GDP growth uh in the in the double digits and unemployment uh below 2%. And I think it's the balance between the jobs that AI is is is gonna take and the training that AI is gonna give an upscale workers uh with a great financial system that supports both. I think we'll be able to manage this trend this transition the same way England has managed the industrial revolution uh beautifully. Um and I think we can we can achieve that as a nation. I'm very, very, very actually optimistic about this.

Drew Edwards 34:09

When I what excites me about your platform, Simon, and and this whole discussion, uh, and when you think about innovation, right, is part of the problem of the transactional worker and the worker that lives outside the system and cashes their checks, et cetera, is they're invisible in the credit world, right? And as I sat and I watched these consumers still do work to pay their T-Mobile bill, work tomorrow to pay the next bill, and I think about your platform. You've got, I don't even have time here to uh pontificate on them, but if you can, if you can start with the the need for them to acquire these transactional jobs, and you've already done that and vertical by vertical, and then the need to get their pay daily, which you've already done, and get it even faster if you need to. If you also in your roadmap were to build in electronic bill payment and uh the rest, just imagine rocket money together with uh actually use Microsoft Copil, not my I mean a company called Copilot Money, but a proper money management platform together with Workwell, where this now you can take AI and this transactional worker and create visibility for the worker so they can see, hey, you just got a new bill in that equates to X number of hours you need to work to pay that bill. You could do that tomorrow, right? But also for the credit community, right, as you can begin to see behaviors and actually discern between the good budgeters and the poor budgeters in that sort of environment. Now you've really brought together the workplace and the budgeting and the transactional payroll into something that's beautiful. I just want to help you power the speed of that money, right? And we haven't even talked about the opportunity then to create new account relationships out of that environment or credit relationships. So to me, that that's where AI and the speed of money and a platform that's industry specific, like you have, can really unlock some potential for not only the people hiring these folks or trying to get to these folks and bank these folks, but for that worker themselves, because now they'll know they can start. I had an Uber driver one time tell me, Simon, that um he could tell you how many rides, how many miles he has to drive per bill. Uh right. Like he had it down in his mind. I gotta, I gotta, it's gonna take me four hours to pay that bill. It's gonna take me, right? Three airport rides, or I gotta, you know. So they already think in terms of how many hours do I need to work for this bill? And think what you could do with that data and with AI to truly just put that in front of them and go, okay, tomorrow we're gonna pay your T-Mobile bill and you'll have that paid by lunchtime.

Simon Khalaf 37:10

July 4th, 2026, Financial Independence Day. Watch us do it. I'm not pre-announcing anything, but but you're spot on tour. You are spot on, right? I mean, this is this is my data science team. This is their challenge. Declare Financial Independence Day. A machine is gonna be the best chief financial officer a human can have. And that person is gonna deliver on July 4th, 2026, financial independence day. Absolutely.

Drew Edwards 37:43

And for a and for a transactional worker, you're in a unique position to do that. There are lots of companies out there that can do that for the guy making a million dollars a year. But for a transactional worker, it it works even better, I would think.

Karen Webster 38:02

I mean, you're creating an ecosystem where you've got these workers in you know, in mass that are attractive to lots of other players who want to reach them. You've aggregated that community and created value and can create more value for them through those new opportunities. I mean, a f final question, Simon. Are you seeing employers re-architect how they think about their own workforce because they have the ability to think differently about filling in using a critical mass of transactional workers that you have on your platform so that they maybe think about how they restructure their own, their own employee base?

Simon Khalaf 38:52

They are. Our demand for exactly what you're talking about, which is a federated labor pool, right? In which we take on uh like like basically making the legal relationship, who's the employer of record versus scheduling, pay, uh uh uh assessment, so on and so forth, make that independent of the legal relationship. Uh, that's what they want. We are behind. As a company, we are behind. I'm I'm working in the look, we've grown over 100% in terms of company, in terms of like staff. I'm trying to hire to meet that demand, but not even a question, especially in uh events, hospitality, 3PL, retail, logistics, they're all looking at what I call an elastic blended pool, in which they have, call it a white-labeled uh uh uh relationship with uh labor, and then something that's more elastic, but all of them being paid the same way, being treated the same way, being scheduled the same way without tripping any compliance regulatory. So absolutely, honestly, if we decouple our what I call our real-term pay from our platform, I bet you it will be a hottest selling product to any company. Uh because all of them are asking us for it, but I cannot deliver it if I don't own their their their schedule, because I'm I'm not in the flow. But but yes, you have to do that.

Karen Webster 40:24

And you also have to you also have to know how much capacity each worker has, because you you only see a piece of it. You have to know how much capacity overall they have. Um and really the the up the opportunity for really innovating this labor economy is uh is is is really exciting.

Simon Khalaf 40:42

And I think it's an eight trillion dollar, it's an eight trillion dollar production market in the United States. Uh eight trillion. So uh I I know uh it is it seems uh I mean we think that this is this is a minority. Uh this is actually, I mean, you if you look at it or GDP, uh sorry, labor-driven GDP in the United States about is about 20 trillion. Eight trillion is uh the community we're talking about. Eight trillion. So that's almost two times the GDP of Germany. Two times.

Karen Webster 41:20

Yeah, and I mean community. And to Drew's point, you know, a workforce that's largely been invisible, um, which now has so many opportunities to be at parity in in so many of the services that have been available to other more fluent members of the work economy now available to this group. Really fascinating conversation, Simon. Drew, thanks so much for your insight and for the innovations that you both put forward to this really important part of the of the working community. Thanks again for your time.

Simon Khalaf 41:57

Thank you for having us.

Narrator 42:03

That's it for this episode of the PYMNTS Podcast: The Thinking Behind the Doing, Conversations with the Leaders Transforming Payments, Commerce, and the Digital Economy. Be sure to follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can also catch every episode on pymnts.com/podcasts. Thanks for listening.