Castle Digital Partners is a venture services firm that partners with management teams to invest in the software platforms that drive their businesses. We are a hands-on partner, as our means of investment is to provide the actual capabilities and team members a business needs to accelerate its software platform vision.   Castle operates product studios in Charlotte, New York, Los Angeles and London that focus on SaaS, digital commerce and tech-enabled services companies.

Castle Digital Partners

BrightDime

We're an independent, unbiased ally helping employees reduce stress, make better financial decisions, and take control of their financial lives.  Our combination of targeted education, on-demand coaching, and personalized tools gives everyone in your company access to a financial wellness solution tailored to exactly their needs.

BrightDime provides a financial wellness platform for employers to offer personalized financial education and financial coaching with a real-time 360° view of users' holistic financial pictures. The platform offers the ability to track bank, mortgage, and brokerage accounts, as well as 401k, health, and flexible savings accounts along with tools to help users with budget, monitoring spending, and minimizing personal debt.

Helping employers provide personalized, high-touch, and holistic financial wellness tools to their entire workforce.

Financial Wellness Tools

BrightDime provides a financial wellness platform for employers to offer personalized financial education and financial coaching with a real-time 360° view of users' holistic financial pictures. The platform offers the ability to track bank, mortgage, and brokerage accounts, as well as 401k, health, and flexible savings accounts along with tools to help users with budget, monitoring spending, and minimizing personal debt.BrightDime operates a subscription-based pricing model and charges a monthly subscription fee of USD 9.99 per employee.Key customers and partnershipsIn May 2024, BrightDime <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29463">collaborated with Kashable</a>, a financial coaching and wellness support platform, to offer free personalized financial coaching and money management tools to expand product reach across the US. In March 2023, the company also partnered with employee benefits company Reliance Matrix to provide a financial wellness solution to employees of its clients. In June 2018, BrightDime integrated with Benefitfocus, a benefits management platform, to leverage Benefitfocus’ customer base and expand product reach.BrightDime reportedly serves clients in the health and benefits industry, including organizations such as Vitality, SentryHealth, and Marcone.

Based in the UK, Salary Finance offers a comprehensive suite of financial well-being benefits for employees. The company partners with employers to offer a platform that provides employees with access to a range of financial well-being products, including salary-backed loans, earned wage advances, savings accounts, and customized educational resources to help them build and automate savings as well as improve their overall financial well-being.In April 2024, the US operations of Salary Finance merged with the financial wellness benefit platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/609722">Finfit</a>. The combined entity now operates under the FinFit brand in the US.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, the platform was used by 600 employers across the UK, available to more than 4.5 million employees. These include more than a fifth of the companies in the FTSE-100 index. Its notable customers include the NHS, Dunelm, Virgin Active, and Simply Health.Salary Finance partnered with the American financial technology company Chime in July 2021, to launch Save—a new product to incentivize US employees to set up a salary-linked savings account with Chime, and become entitled to a USD 50 bonus and a variable Annual Percentage Yield (APY) of 0.50%.

Salary Finance

Payactiv offers a financial wellness solution, centered around "Earned-Wage Access," allowing employees to access their wages before payday. Employees can instantly access funds for hours worked, with options to transfer to their bank, load onto a Payactiv card, or withdraw cash at Walmart. Its app works as a digital wallet and includes additional features such as AI and machine-learning-based tools for budgeting, tracking savings, managing spending and bills, and obtaining personalized one-on-one financial coaching from trained professionals.The Payactiv app also features a free communication tool—Payactiv Connect—that enables employers and employees to connect for HR communications, company news, alerts, and shift scheduling.Key customers and partnershipsAs of November 2023, PayActiv’s platform was used by employees at over 4,000 businesses from industries such as retail and food services across the US, with some customers in Canada, Australia, the Philippines, and Brazil. Its clients include Walmart, Wayfair, Ibex Global and several others. It also entered into a partnership with US Bank in February 2022, where users of prepaid US Bank Focus Cards for payroll will be able to access their wages early.The company also has working partnerships with payment processors such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/23004">Fiserv</a> and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/13061">Visa</a> to enable real-time transfer of earned wages to bank accounts of employees.

PayActiv

Based In the UK, Wagestream provides a financial wellness platform, offering a range of services including earned wage access, financial education, tools for savings, and pay and spend tracking. Wagestream’s tools are offered to employees through a mobile app, with an analytics platform for employers to monitor participation and financial resilience of staff.Employees can access their earned wages using the app by paying a flat fee of GBP 1.95 (USD 2.50) per withdrawal. The company’s platform has integrations with several payroll and timekeeping systems, enabling organizations to deploy Wagestream into their payroll process.Wagestream acquired 1) Australian earned-wage access startup Earnd in March 2021 to enter into the Australian market. 2) a credit card startup Keebos, in October 2023, to integrate Keebos credit score building platform (that uses open banking data) with Wagestream’s core offerings.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, Wagestream had a global user base of more than 3 million, which included more than 1,000 corporate customers in industries such as the retail, hospitality, and healthcare sectors. The company has offices in the US, UK, Spain, and Australia and some notable employers include Burger King, Pizza Hut, Crate &amp; Barrel, Bupa, University of Chicago, Popeyes, and National Health Service UK.The company also partnered with French Insuretch provider Wakam in August 2023, to introduce income protection coverage to its users.

Wagestream

Cleo offers tools for budgeting, and provides personalized spending and savings advice by connecting to a user's bank account and applying machine learning algorithms to analyze spending habits and transaction history. The app also provides access to an interactive chatbot which users can query to obtain on-demand suggestions (which has been supported by an in-house large language model since 2023).&nbsp;The platform also offers additional features such as a secured card to build credit score, direct debits, and salary advances.Cleo operates a subscription-based pricing on its budgeting and savings tools, with fee-based pricing on its cash advance offerings targeted at gig workers and workers with poor credit. The platform charges monthly subscription fees in the range of USD 1.99 - 5.99 on Cleo Plus offering and charges USD 10.99-14.99 on Cleo build offering.Cleo’s target market is the Gen-Z segment of the population and as of October 2023, the company had 7 million users, (up from 4 million in December 2020) and had USD 72.3 million annual recurring revenue (which was up 2.4x YoY)

Cleo

FinFit offers a financial wellness benefit platform for employers that uses predictive AI, and includes tools for employees to budget, track spending, set savings goals and obtain personalized financial assessments. The platform also provides access to certified financial counselors to obtain one-on-one financial advice. In addition to financial coaching, the company also offers services such as tools to manage student loan debt, get early access to earned wages, and obtain low-cost short-term loans backed by the employee’s salary. In April 2023, Fitfit merged with the US operations of UK-based financial wellness platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/342361">Salary Finance</a>. The two companies aim to launch a combined platform in the US under the Finfit brand.FinFit operates a subscription-based pricing model, and charges employers in the range of USD 0.30–1.00 per employee per month based on the size of the organizations and number of employees. The platform also generates revenue through interest income by charging users interest in the range of 7.9%–24.9% APR on its loans. It charges fixed interest on its lines of credit.As of March 2024, FinFit was reported to be serving more than 500,000 employees (up from 150,000 in 2020).Key customers and partnershipsIn September 2024, FinFit <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33696">partnered with</a> <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/945256">Sunny Day Fund</a>, a financial support platform, to offer emergency savings accounts for employees through its SafetyNet platform. In August 2024, FinFit <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32581">partnered with</a> <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/493140">isolved</a>, a human capital management platform, to expand product reach.

FinFit

Offers interactive platforms or apps for employers to provide personalized financial advice to its employees. These also include tools for budgeting, tracking earnings, and managing expenses.

Provides a platform for employers to offer its employees an alternative to payday loans. Can either be early access to wages already earned or emergency access to interest-free funds which are settled through the paycheck.

Provides a platform for employers to provide resources such as tools and advice to manage employee debt (with an increased focus on student loan debt).

Consumers can use these applications to obtain personalized financial advice, automate savings, create budgets, and track and manage their spending.

Operates a B2B SaaS model to support employers with offering various fringe benefits to employees

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 
 Financial wellbeing support platforms, Kashable and BrightDime, have formed a partnership to offer free personalised financial coaching and money management tools. The collaboration aims to expand their product reach across the US.
 Their plan is to offer these services to more than 50 companies, including IKEA, Chobani, and Nasdaq, benefiting over 170,000 employees. Kashable users will be able to access free financial coaching sessions and other educational resources provided by BrightDime. 
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 Early this year, Kashable secured USD 25.6 million in <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/25686"> Series B funding </a> to support its expansion plans, develop new financial wellness services, and enhance its capabilities to extend affordable credit to employees across the credit spectrum.

BrightDime

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