Level Finance, a South African fintech start-up, is among the 20 finalists who made the cut for GrindstoneXL, the entrepreneurship development programme by Grindstone. The earned wage access (EWA) and financial wellness disruptor will receive support interventions to help scale the business.
Level set up shop in 2020 to help relieve the burden on the gainfully employed in South Africa. This, as the concept of EWA saw growth across the world, offering employees a chance to free themselves from indebtedness.
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The idea of accessing your earned salary at any point in the month when you need it is said to deter people from taking out high-interest loans when faced with emergencies. South Africans find themselves overburdened as the country finds itself facing adverse economic conditions. Due to the high rate of unemployment, recent serial interest rates hikes, skyrocketing food, utility, and transport costs, South Africans are stretched beyond their means.
Grindstone, a well-respected accelerator, will now offer Level an opportunity to network, gain knowledge through skills-transfer and learn new ways to effectively grow their business and make themselves “funding ready” for investors. This sought-after programme sees hundreds of applications each year, which is then whittled down to ten companies in Cape Town and ten in Johannesburg.
Raeesa Gabriels, chief executive of Level Finance, believes that Grindstone has created an opportunity to take her business further, since starting up when the country was facing the onslaught of Covid-19.
“When we started the business, it was not with the intention of gaining huge profit margins. It was honestly because we felt a need to provide an alternative to this 30-day pay cycle we are in. We want to equip and educate South Africans with tools they need to find financial freedom, not just with the on-demand pay element, but with our saving education tools as well,” she says.
She adds that companies who offer EWA to their employees, show current and prospective employees that they really do care about them and their welfare and growing an engaged workforce.
“We are thrilled at the opportunity to find renewed success through this programme. We have already achieved a fair amount in the short time we have been in business, but this creates an opportunity to take it one step further – to level up.”
Level Finance is a financial wellness platform that helps employers offer employees immediate access to a percentage of their earned wages before payday. Gabriel describes it as a family of fintech entrepreneurs, engineers and designers who are laser-focused on building salary-linked wellness benefits that help employees live healthier, happier lives.
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