Jul 21, 2026 · 37 min · 11 segments
Steven Furman is the founder and CEO of Paytime, Australia's biggest and most established earned wage access platform. He has over 25 years of experience in private equity, mergers and acquisitions…
I mean, is this something that is new to Australia or am I just ignorant that that's quite possible as well?
And the reason for that is this solution has been in Australia for about five years.
The main reason is that cost of living pressures in Australia has really only been exacerbated in the last circa two years and getting worse and worse, as we know.
Whereas most other countries, cost of living pressures started during COVID times and has continued ever since.
So, in the last circa two years, now we're seeing a rapid uptake, a rapid adoption, and more and more companies saying, what is happening globally in terms of living pressures and what are companies doing overseas that Australia isn't? So, that's why we're now starting to see this uptake and more people knowing about it.
And, you know, I mean, was this more of a financial system inefficiency, would you say? Or is it more of a human problem? Like, what was sort of your driving force in coming up with this idea?
I would say it was probably a human or what I would call a social problem that's really become something that's impossible to now ignore.
Now, you know, we still have that notion sometimes that people will say, oh, If we give people access to their money all the time, they're just going to go to pokies and pubs and clubs and spend all their money.
And if we look at our parents or grandparents, before payroll software was designed circa 50 years ago, they would wait at the factory door every day and get cash in hand.
I mean, is this something that is new to Australia or am I just ignorant that that's quite possible as well?
And the reason for that is this solution has been in Australia for about five years.
The main reason is that cost of living pressures in Australia has really only been exacerbated in the last circa two years and getting worse and worse, as we know.
Whereas most other countries, cost of living pressures started during COVID times and has continued ever since.
So, in the last circa two years, now we're seeing a rapid uptake, a rapid adoption, and more and more companies saying, what is happening globally in terms of living pressures and what are companies doing overseas that Australia isn't? So, that's why we're now starting to see this uptake and more people knowing about it.
And, you know, I mean, was this more of a financial system inefficiency, would you say? Or is it more of a human problem? Like, what was sort of your driving force in coming up with this idea?
I would say it was probably a human or what I would call a social problem that's really become something that's impossible to now ignore.
Now, you know, we still have that notion sometimes that people will say, oh, If we give people access to their money all the time, they're just going to go to pokies and pubs and clubs and spend all their money.
And if we look at our parents or grandparents, before payroll software was designed circa 50 years ago, they would wait at the factory door every day and get cash in hand.
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