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, and financial services, and spent years working in payment automation and invoice financing before identifying a similar opportunity on the employee side of the ledger.

In this episode of the CFO Access Podcast, host Jeff Robson sits down with Steven to unpack earned wage access – a concept that has been standard in the US for 10 years and the UK for nine, but is only now gaining traction in Australia. Steven explains how Paytime enables employees to access a portion of the pay they’ve already earned before payday, without creating debt, affecting credit scores, or impacting the employer’s cashflow.

They dig into why CFOs should be paying attention to this beyond the HR angle, how financial stress shows up as absenteeism and no-shows on the balance sheet, and how Paytime gives finance leaders a more flexible tool in wage negotiation conversations. They also cover the mechanics of payday super, why 5% advance fees are actually ludicrous when annualised, and how some CFOs are already using the platform to dollar-cost average into ETFs and pay off their mortgages faster.

Plus: a gym that didn’t work out, and the word plethora at a funeral.

This Episode:

0:00 Welcome & introducing Steven Furman

1:42 From private equity to payroll: how invoice financing sparked the idea

3:28 What is earned wage access and how does it work?

5:54 Why Australia is 10 years behind the US and UK

8:22 The light bulb moment: payday lenders growing while people struggle

9:34 Earned wage access vs payday lenders, BNPL, and on-demand pay

11:00 The ludicrous maths behind 5% advance fees

13:12 Fees, guardrails, and the 50% access cap

14:18 CFOs: this is a workforce ROI play, not just an employee benefit

17:26 No cashflow or balance sheet impact: how the model works

21:00 Why employees never ask for pay advances (and what to do about it)

25:18 Payday super, pay cycle shifts, and saving 12 to 37% of working capital

Connect with Steven Furman on LinkedIn