Argyle raises $2.6M from Checkr and Bain Capital Ventures to build the backbone of the future of work.
Businesses in industries as varied as lending, banking, insurance and healthcare are using Argyle’s software to access their consumer’s workforce data to better verify income and employment, monitor cash-on-hand in real-time and assess credibility to purchase products and services. With the consumer’s consent, data points including earnings history, schedules and ratings are available from a variety of workforce platforms. In under a year, Argyle’s Data Network includes platforms such as UBER, Lyft, Postmates, Doordash and Instacart amongst others.
“Over the last year, we’ve developed a close relationship with Shmulik and his team as they’ve built Argyle into a platform for workforce data,” said Daniel Yanisse, Co-Founder & CEO of Checkr.
“This partnership cements our commitment to helping consumers and companies evolve to the new ways we work while giving workers access to important benefits and services.”
Authentication for The Future of Work
An individual’s work history has been the bedrock for businesses seeking to underwrite risk, issue credit and provide services. But the ubiquity of smart phones and “gig-work” have spurred a global shift in working habits making this increasingly difficult to do. From Walmart to Chipotle to UBER, workers are adopting multiple employers at once and shorter duration jobs. This pivot to shift-based work has created a huge amount of fragmented workforce data with no single system providing a complete picture of an individual’s career.
Argyle provides a layer to solve this complexity for businesses. Through the use of the Argyle Plugin, businesses can give their customers a secure and convenient way to grant access to all of their workforce data. This source-based data allows businesses to provide better underwriting, monitoring and a tailored user experience. Data points tied to a customer’s identity (e.g. name, driver’s license), career (e.g. hours worked, jobs completed), finances (e.g. net income, tips, cash on hand) and reputation (e.g. ratings, reviews) are all available in real-time. More, Argyle normalizes the data sets at each workforce platform to make them easily digestible and actionable for a business.
“As the employment market continues to undergo seismic shifts and more Americans are freelancing than ever before, there is an increasing need for businesses to access uniform worker data reliably. Argyle offers a non-invasive tool for businesses to better understand customer work history and offer tailored solutions in the form of insurance, banking, benefits and other important work services,” said Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Capital Ventures.
The New World of Data Ownership
Unlike legacy providers like Equifax, Argyle does not sell user data to third parties. Instead, Argyle puts control of workforce data back into the hands of workers and charges businesses for access when workers consent to their information being shared.
As new regulations — from Europe’s GDPR to California’s CCPA — are shifting consumer data rights, Argyle’s offering provides a tool for businesses to benefit from these new standards while remaining compliant.
