It's not a credit product, what we are offering somebody is access to money they've already earned but not being paid. It's not an interest-bearing product. You're not activating the product. You're not paying late repayment fees because this is money that will come off your payslip. 

What we've tried to do with Floatpays is make it really, really simple for the end user - our customer, the employee - to understand money and to bring together multiple facets of financial wellness into one application, which they can use to improve their financial wellness. That is how we see it being a key differentiator.

We've tried to really build a revenue structure that is socially impactful by keeping costs low and profits at a reasonable rate so that both the employee and the Floatpays business benefit so that we create a long-term sustainable business. That's really the model. 

A lot of the early work we did was really focusing on educating the market on the new thing called earned-wage access was and why it was important for reaching the longer term goal of financial inclusion.The next challenge was the impact of Covid, we launched in February 2020 and a month later we went into full lockdown. The team were all sacrificing on salaries. We were into mortgage payments to pay salaries. It was a very, very tough time. 

I would say to any entrepreneur who wants to get into the social-impact space, think about your positioning as a business. Where do you sit on that scale from NGO to full profit-making entity? Clearly, clearly articulate the type of investors you want. The story you tell investors needs to be believable. The way you make it believable is believe it yourself.

For any entrepreneur listening, speak to your customers, ask them about your product, good or bad, get engaged and don't take your biases into the conversation. Listen and learn, and ultimately you'll deliver an app that people really love, and that's what you are there for.

Take advantage of the opportunities that come naturally through the process, whether they are good or bad. Bad feedback is just as valuable, if not more, than good feedback. Constructive criticism helps you improve. Look for those opportunities, be curious, ask questions. We send out a lot of customer surveys to understand how they're finding the product and what they're doing. 

The first is that from a pure technology perspective, data is your number one asset. The second element is interoperability. As a business, we don’t know whether we’re going to acquire something, part with something, integrate new technologies or just become an embedded tech service. Next is flexibility and low cost structures. Everything we do is cloud hosted and everything we build is microservices.

Don't be tempted to reinvent the wheel. There's no value in that. Your value is offering your customers something that's going to delight them, that's going to be unique, that's going to drive your business forward. Partner where you can, and look for the win-win in that partnership. Building an ecosystem where everyone benefits is where you want to be.