Embedding Payments into Your Shift Work Experience
From increased productivity to higher shift pick-up, embedded payments deepen the engagement between shift workers and their preferred platforms. During this year’s Shift Work Summit, the fireside chat with Ahmed Siddiqui, Chief Payments Officer of workforce payments platform Branch and author of Anatomy of the Swipe, and Hypertrack CMO Gaurav Deshpande explored the critical role embedded payments play in enhancing shift-based work experiences.
Watch the replay to learn how embedding payments can drive workforce retention and support growth for shift work marketplaces. The links below will point you to the key points, watch the replay below for the full video.
The Shift Work Payments Problem
How Payments Improve the Shift Work Experience
How Location Data Improves the Speed of Payments
The Future of Instant Payments
Gaurav Deshpande: Hello! Welcome to the second last session of Shift Work Summit, and as promised earlier. I have saved the last two best sessions for the end.
Gaurav Deshpande: The customer list of Branch, the workforce payment platform we are about to introduce is making me hungry because Domino's is one of their marquee customers, so is Uber. So if you take an Uber or you've had pizza delivered from Domino's, you have had the benefit of the payment platform that the workers at these companies utilize.
Also, you heard from Nursa earlier, the healthcare marketplace that uses HyperTrack for location intelligence.
They also use Branch as their app for workforce payment platform. So with that, it is my pleasure to welcome Ahmed Siddiqui product leader by day, and bestselling author by night. He has a wonderful book on payments and bearer of an ocean of expertise when it comes to payments. I promise he'll delight you with his insights and humility.
Welcome, Ahmed over to you, my friend.
Ahmed Siddiqui:
Thanks. Thanks, Gaurav, for having me. I'm honored to be a part of this conference. I mean, your lineup has been pretty amazing today. So I'm I'm excited to be part of this. And again, I think you teed it up so nicely, because you know, every time I think about our customers. I do get hungry as well, and so like you, I think if people want to get an idea of what is Branch, I think, explaining it in terms of pizza is always a lot of fun.
The Branch Origin Story
And so again, yeah, everybody. My name is Ahmed Siddiqui. I lead product and payments over at Branch, and we are a workforce payments platform. And I think where we get really excited is where we can help people get paid as soon as possible, because a lot of the people that we essentially provide services for are regular working Americans. They're shift workers, they’re traveling nurses, they’re pizza delivery drivers, they’re Uber drivers, etc, and so getting people access to their money as soon as possible is really good from a cash flow perspective and kind of where we got our start.
We actually found even this is before Covid, you know. I think a lot of us have really shifted our way of paying for things.
And so like, do you even remember paying for pizza with cash anymore?
Gaurav Deshpande:
I don't even remember that. I mean, that goes back to back the like early 2000 days. Absolutely. Yeah.
Ahmed Siddiqui:
Yeah. So it used to be used to be the case that you would give the pizza store a call, as you know, they call up Domino's, and you say, Hey, I wanna order this pizza.
Can you please deliver it to my address? And then the delivery guy would come, and then you would hand them cash for the pizza, and then you'd say, Keep the tip right?
So nobody does that anymore. Like everybody either uses the app or they call in. They give a credit card over the phone, and then the delivery driver brings you a receipt, and then on the receipt you just write in how much tip you want to give them. And so, instead of the pizza delivery driver walking out with a wad of cash.They're walking in with a wad of receipts right?
And so a lot of times these people are driving pretty late. So it's, you know, maybe 1, 2 am. By the time that they're done with their drives, they get into the office. They hand over all these receipts and they tally it up, and a lot of these drivers. They make about about a hundred dollars a night. So it's actually pretty decent money.
The Shift Work Payments Problem
And what was happening is that the manager would go to the cash register to try to pull that $100 for the driver, but they were finding that there's no money in the cash register, because when people go in to pay for the pizza, they're using their card as well. And so there is no cash anywhere. So it created a big problem because these drivers, they need that money. They need that $100 a night.
And there wasn't a good solution. And so we were working with Domino's on this. And we said, You know, I think we could solve this. This is actually a payments problem, right?
And so they were able to tell us at the end of every night. How much in tips each person earned, and then what we would do is we would instantly pay that out to them, regardless of if it's in the night or weekend, or whatever, and, as you're aware, like the majority of us, get paid through direct deposit which is on ACH. And the problem is that only runs during the day, and it does not run on the weekends. So for a lot of these people that depend on monies, for, you know, getting it at odd hours.
The Branch Solution
They don't have a choice but to like wait maybe two days after, if they want to get their money. So we wanted to solve this problem. And we built a platform that basically addresses the need to get people paid instantly, be it their tips, be it their full wages, be it their gig work, etc. And so that essentially, that's how we got into a lot of this. And then, you know. Again. It started off on this pizza delivery thing. But we get into restaurants. We are into other hospitality spaces.
We work in the logistics space, and then obviously gig marketplaces. Uber is our marquee customer. And so again we pay out every driver after every ride. And so you can imagine these drivers are actually getting paid out somewhere between 30 to 60 times a day.
Right? So, you want to be able to provide that level of service.
Gaurav Deshpande:
That's that's outstanding. I think Jimmy John is another one of your customers.
Ahmed Siddiqui:
Yes, Jimmy John's also, yeah.
Sub so fast you’ll freak.
It's money so fast you'll freak right so.
Gaurav Deshpande:
Absolutely absolutely wonderful. Thank you for sharing that.
Gaurav Deshpande:
Is it okay, if we do a little fireside chat and go through more questions, because there's a lot of engineers here that want to know about how to embed the payment platforms into into their shift work marketplaces. So let's get right into it before we get there. You describe the journey of Branch a little bit. About how you evolved, but maybe give us a 2 min journey of how you got started, because I don't think we talked about that we talked about Domino's. Is that how it got started?
Ahmed Siddiqui:
It actually predates that. So I've been with Branch for 6 years. Atif, who started the company, 8 and almost 9 years now that he's been in the the journey, and I joined him when the company was actually doing shift-swapping work.
And so we had an app predominantly for target employees. Where they can look at shifts. They can pick up shifts, they can swap shifts that kind of thing.
And it was also solving a pretty exciting problem in that, like a lot of these people just don't make very much money. And so the way that we wanted to solve this problem is help them get more work to make more money.
How Payments Improve the Shift Work Experience
What we learned through that experience is that it wasn't necessarily like making more money as much as it was making money sooner.
And so all these people are making more money, but they're making it on the 15th and the 30th of every month. And for a lot of people, what ends up happening is that they will get paid, and then they have to spend all that money for everyday expenses, be it their rent, be it their groceries and whatnot, and they don't have very much money in between.
And so for a lot of these, I mean, this is a majority of America, by the way, we wanted to even out those problems, if we can get them paid, maybe more frequently, for example, that solves a lot of problems, because then they can go ahead and go to the grocery and get the things they need.
If they need to buy medicine, if they need to get gas, whatever it is. They could do that versus saying, Oh, my God, I don't have any money in my bank account until the 15th or the 30th right? So that's actually how we got going. But then Domino's was one of our early customers in kind of the shift swapping space.
And we learned about these payment problems from them as well. And we said, You know what we should solve this problem. It's a payments problem, you know.
Gaurav Deshpande: Excellent. Thank you for sharing that. It's great to see that you were able to go across different industries, starting with the retail shift swapping over to hospitality with Domino's Jimmy John over to healthcare with Nursa and others.
It's excellent to see that you're able to go across multiple industries. What specific challenges are related to each of the industries that were unique in terms of a workflow? Would you mind sharing some of those.
Ahmed Siddiqui:
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. So I think, when you think about companies that are very sophisticated, such as Uber. They have a lot of data, right? They have a ton of data on their drivers. They know exactly when a drive is completed. They've got their location data, etc. And so they're able to tell us the moment somebody steps out of a car.
How much to pay the driver, right? So they have that information.
Now, the problem is that majority of companies don't have that level of sophistication. And so what we see a lot of is that people saying, hey, we see what you're doing here with Uber and Domino's, etc, like, can we get that same kind of experience? And the problem that we run into a lot is it's a data problem more than anything else.
What happens is that you know getting accurate clock-in/clock-out data is really hard because there's a human process right? It's like, Oh, somebody forgot to clock out. Oh, they didn't get a manager to approve this or whatever. And so those things slow down payments.
How Location Data Improves the Speed of Payments
And so what you guys are doing at HyperTack is so interesting because what it can do is it can speed up that approval process. And therefore, because the signals and everything that you're providing, it speeds that up such that when you know, like, we'll use Nursa as the example.
I mean that's how they utilize HyperTrack is that you know, once somebody completes a shift with Nursa, the data that is being provided to them through HyperTrack can confirm that time, and then, therefore, they're able to tell us.
Hey? You know what this nurse actually did work this. So please go ahead and pay them right? So that's that's probably one of the biggest challenges around is that the data is just not fast enough in a majority of industries, right?
And so we, we believe that we we've got the payment stack like we have solved that problem. But the data that comes before that is always the challenge. Right?
Gaurav Deshpande:
Yeah, it's the shift verification that's music to my ears. Thank you for sharing that. Because location data and the intelligence around it is underlying what Nursa sees per shift verification, for example, to make sure that the nurses and the clinicians are paid out fairly and on time.
So that's a wonderful have you seen that across the industry the rate when the workers expect the payment? Is it similar? So like Uber – what kind of turnaround time do workers expect? Or have you seen difference in industry?
Ahmed Siddiqui:
Yeah, yeah, let's let's talk about that. So again, the vast majority of us get paid every 2 weeks. Right? This is kind of the norm.
But what's happening with shift workers or any gig workers? They also standard. They get paid out, maybe every 2 weeks or every one week. Right?
But what has happened is Uber pioneered this concept of getting paid every day.
So you complete work and you get paid that same day, and I mean obviously Lyft and Doordash and Instacart. All these, you know, major gig platforms have, you know, really pushed that. And so I think it's becoming kind of an expectation that people get paid at the end of their workday at a minimum. Right? And it's it's it used to be kind of a luxury, but it feels to me that that's how everything is gonna happen.
And so in the next few years, you're going to see this huge wave of people that are going to get paid every day. And it's because, you know of the technology improvements that have been made in the you know the last decade or so?
So every industry is slightly different. There are different challenges to get there right. But I think it's almost becoming a requirement that not only can platforms provide quick and easy access to work and jobs that you know you can pick up flexibly.
But also will provide them that same level of speed and accuracy on payment, too.
So not only are you able to find a ton of great shifts and work, but you can also get paid for it right away, too. So I think that's going to become more of the norm going forward.
Gaurav Deshpande:
Yeah, thank you, Evan, and I can share a story about my daughter. She used to get paid for her chores. She came and demanded payments instantly and then my wife instituted a system, saying, Hey, why don't you take the picture of the kitchen after you're done?
The dish dishwasher and the sink before I pay you. So there's that work verification that was happening there.
Ahmed Siddiqui:
Gaurav, I think I think you should build this business – like chore tracker, chore tracker, app.
Gaurav Deshpande:
That's right, exactly now. Oh, now, since everybody wants to get paid as soon as possible, embedding payment plat payment platform like Branch is wonderful. What are the components involved in that solution on the call here?
Ahmed Siddiqui:
Yeah, so let's let's actually get a little bit nerdy, if you don't mind. So so the when we're talking about payments, especially in this space, right?
The reality is the traditional direct deposit, or ACH rails are not sufficient.
And why? Why? That is because it's going to be required. Don't get me wrong, ACH Is very solid. It's it's been there forever. It works.
But the problem is that you? It's a batch-based process right? And so if you miss a cutoff window, you cannot pay that person for at least another day or 2 potentially, and then it doesn't work on weekends, and it doesn't work on nights. And so really, when you're thinking about building out payments for this specific demographic that we're talking about, you have to be on faster rails. And so what Branch has effectively built is a way to pay these people out in most cases for free instantly, and the way in which we do it is that we we have built out the Branch wallet and the Branch wallet. You could think of it as a digital checking account. It has a mastercard debit card with it. And what happens is that funds are actually added to that account instantly, and we could do it for free. So it's free to the gig platform, and it's free to the worker. Because again, for this guy that's making a hundred dollars in tips, you don't want to take any fees out of there, because it's only a hundred dollars, really. So we have built a platform that can do this entirely for free.
And it's done by building this out. As a you know, it is a truly an FDIC insured, checking account, right? And so to do it compliantly. It requires a lot of work to get that done. We also offer ways to get paid out to any other bank account. There's a small fee attached to that. But again, that's also instant as well.
The Future of Instant Payments
I think we need to kind of shift our mindset a little bit around how we traditionally think about paying people. It needs to be part of a platform that can do this any time of day, instantly. And do it for as cheap as possible, and that's hard. That's a hard mix to get.
And then on top of that, I want to also say that compliance. And then there's a lot of oversight that happens from sponsor banks and various other financial institutions. And so you need essentially somebody that knows how to navigate that correctly.
Gaurav Deshpande:
Absolutely. Yeah, knowing what the regulations are required from banking perspective, especially when it comes to an account. That's, you know, taking in deposits of keeping money there and paying out.
It's essential to do that. I spent significant years in financial services industry. So I hear you completely emit questions for you on a solution platforms that the audience should be considering the engineers in the audience, the solution architects especially when building or partnering to build payments systems. What are the key things they should consider?
Ahmed Siddiqui:
Yeah. So so again, it all depends on, number one. How much experience you have in this.
Certainly you can build, all of, essentially you could build all of the things that Branch has in house. But the thing is that you need people like a lot of people to be able to support it effectively. Right? And so when you're building out embedded payments for a workforce right?
If you were to build it yourself, it can be done. Don't get me wrong. It, but it might take you, maybe 12 to 18 months.
Just to get the thing built. And it's while, I'm gonna say that there's plenty of providers out there with really good APIs just getting all of it to work harmoniously together. It. That's actually, what is the challenge? Right?
Ahmed Siddiqui:
So you could potentially go with a batch provider. Right? You could go with, you know your own issuer processor or your own, acquire processor, etc.
As long as you know how those systems interact and how you're going to manage the support on those so that that can all be done. But again, you should factor in about 12 to 18 months.
The flip side of it is, you could partner with somebody who has done this in the past, who can bring this to market much faster. So on average, for example, if you were to work with Branch.
What we would do is we would power that entire experience and get you up, you know, anywhere between 2 to 3 months.
So the go-to-market times becomes much shorter, let's you focus on your core business, which is, you know, helping people get the right shifts, you know, having a good experience with the shifts that they have taken, etc.
And let us focus on making sure that the payments are reliable and fast, and the reliability thing Gaurav also is is really critical. Because, I mean, these people have options. Right? So if something happens to the payment, they're going to leave to another platform and essentially work for your competitor. So it's very, very important that it's done quickly and reliably like, I can't understate the reliability side of it.
Gaurav Deshpande:
Yeah, there's no topic closer to heart for a worker and the payment for the job. So that's that's very well, said Ahmed.
I do have a question for you, and that's a question that I ask all people who are part of this crazy journey of building a startup where you've been building out Branch with Atif for last several years. Describe to me one Aha! Moment that's part of the journey here.
Ahmed Siddiqui:
Yeah, I mean, I I think I kind of covered it with the whole pizza story right? And it's we wouldn't have thought about doing this, had we not actually talked to our end users. Right? So I think I think what people don't really understand is that you know, the idea was one thing I mean. Atif had this idea that he wanted to build this like easy, shift, swapping app, originally. And in speaking with the end users. We came to really learn what is their real problems, right?
Again, this is more just general startup advice is that you know. Don't be so hung up on your original idea, like a majority of really great businesses, never started that way, and they always kind of like pivot and shift, and so don't be afraid of the pivot and the shift, but it's all about following the customer and really understanding where the pain is, and then trying to figure out how to do it very well for them, because again, I wasn't chasing after affluent people, you know, like, had I done that, I would have probably charged a premium.
These the people that we were talking with were, you know, low to medium income earners, and they don't have a lot of money to be, you know, spending to pay for fees and that kind of thing. So, how can we do this for them quickly, reliably, and also for low or no cost?
Gaurav Deshpande:
That's wonderful. And that's what we are all here for. The shift of marketplaces is to enable workers to choose when they work, where they work and how they get paid. And that's an the Branch experience, combined with HyperTrack for verifying is an integral part of that.
Thanks a lot for joining me, Ahmed, I'm going to put Ahmed's email here into the chat for people to contact you – would you like to invite them to a free trial, or something that they should sign up for Branch app? What's the best way to get in touch with your team?
Ahmed Siddiqui:
Yeah, I mean to get it. It's just branchapp.com. So there's actually a lot of branch businesses out there. So it's Branch app - APP, dot com, and feel free, if you have any questions or thoughts you can reach out to me, or you can reach out right to the website. And you can get set up on a demo or somebody can help you out. But again, as as you're thinking through your payment challenges we're really excited to be able to partner with you. And you know, even if it needs brainstorming. I love that kind of stuff. So bring it on let's see how we can make the lives of these workers really enjoyable and great.