- Argyle, a company that provides infrastructure for consumers to connect their workforce platforms to businesses, announced it raised $2.6 million in a seed round of funding from Checkr and Bain Capital
Argyle — a company that provides infrastructure for consumers to connect their workforce platforms to businesses — announced it raised $2.6 million in a seed round of funding from Checkr and Bain Capital Ventures.
There are a number of businesses in industries as varied as lending, banking, insurance, and healthcare that 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.
And with the consumer’s consent, data points including earnings history, schedules and ratings are available from a variety of workforce platforms. With the consumer’s consent, data points including earnings history, schedules and ratings are available from a variety of workforce platforms. Argyle’s Data Network is used by platforms including Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Doordash, Instacart, and several others.
“We’re creating a set of industry standards for companies to build their businesses on top of and are excited to see how new businesses tailored for flexible workers adopt and utilize Argyle. This round of financing will allow us to further build out the Argyle Data Network and build our product suite,” said Argyle CEO Shmulik Fishman.
The work history of individuals has been the bedrock for businesses that are seeking to underwrite risk, issue credit, and provide services. However, the ubiquity of smartphones and gig work have spurred a global shift in working habits thus making this increasingly difficult to do. People who work for companies like Walmart, Chipotle, and Uber are adopting multiple employers at once and shorter duration jobs. And 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 for solving this complexity for businesses. With the use of the Argyle Plugin, businesses are able to give their customers a secure and convenient way to grant access to all of their workforce data. And this source-based data allows businesses to provide better underwriting, monitoring, and a tailored user experience.
The data points tied to a customer’s identity (name and driver’s license), career (hours worked and jobs completed), finances (net income, tips, and cash on hand) and reputation (ratings and reviews) are all available in real-time.
And Argyle normalizes the data sets at each workforce platform to make them easily digestible and actionable for business.
“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,” added Checkr co-founder and CEO Daniel Yanisse. “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.”
Argyle does not sell user data to third parties. And 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 like Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA are shifting consumer data rights, Argyle’s offering is able to provide a tool for businesses to benefit from these new standards while remaining compliant.
“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,” explained Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Capital Ventures.
