ONE@Work: Helping Workers Bridge the Income Gap Between Paydays

Many employers understand the importance of doing more to alleviate their employees’ financial stress. However, they have less clarity about which benefits to offer to address employee financial challenges. Among other priorities, there is a need for an affordable earned wage access (EWA) solution that helps employees manage income volatility, surprise expenses, and bills between paydays. Pairing earned wage access with tools that help workers plan, budget, and save can boost their financial health and job satisfaction while improving retention and loyalty.

ONE@Work helps employers invest in their workforces by providing employees with tools to improve their financial lives. The ONE@Work platform gives workers access to earned wages when they need them, offering workers more control over their paychecks and helping them avoid predatory payday loans. 

As one of the first fintechs to disrupt the traditional payday lending industry, ONE@Work brought its solution to life with help from the Financial Solutions Lab (FSL), an initiative managed by the Financial Health Network in collaboration with founding partner JPMorgan Chase and with support from Prudential Financial. ONE@Work was an ideal match for FSL, which aimed to cultivate, support, and scale innovative ideas that improve financial health. The two organizations worked together to test, measure, and optimize ONE@Work’s platform, leading to a collaboration with Walmart that has paved the way for a growing market of digital earned wage access solutions.

Note: The Financial Health Network partnered with fintech Even when it joined the Financial Solutions Lab Accelerator program in 2015. Even was later acquired by Walmart in 2022, which merged Even with ONE. Even now operates under the ONE brand and is known as ONE@Work. 

In partnership with retail giant Walmart, ONE@Work has succeeded in serving workers at scale. Hazel, Walmart’s fintech venture, acquired ONE@Work (then known as Even) in 2022, connecting workers with earned wage access and savings tools. While users initially join the ONE@Work platform for earned wage access, the company has found that their usage shifts to other tools on the platform as they grow their savings over time.

The Financial Health Network and ONE@Work first began their collaboration in 2015, when ONE@Work joined the Financial Health Network’s inaugural Financial Solutions Lab Accelerator program. Since then, the organizations have worked together to:

• • Understand, define, and measure the impact of ONE@Work’s platform on users through the Financial Health Network’s Impact Lab.
  • Test new platform features with the Financial Health Network’s Impact Lab and behavioral insights team to find ways to help users increase savings.
  • Connect ONE@Work with Financial Health Network policy experts to understand earned wage access usage and publish first-of-its-kind research on the subject, highlighting the need for innovation to support millions of families living paycheck to paycheck.
  • Introduce ONE@Work to a Financial Health Network Member organization to pilot its offering with frontline workers, which eventually spurred ONE@Work to pivot its business to the employer channel and paved the way to its future work with Walmart.