Case Study: Wethos

Opportunity

Wethos saw an opportunity to help their small-business customers process payments and manage cash flow

Solution

With Unit, Wethos was able to launch banking products in just 6 weeks, with two engineers

Data Points

• Since launching banking products, Wethos now sees 40% month-over-month user growth 
• Implementing Unit required just 6 weeks and 2 engineers‍
• Users who bank with Wethos are retained at a rate 6x higher than other users
• Wethos processed $1.5 million in payments within six months of launching banking products

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A full-service platform for independent contractors

Wethos is an end-to-end platform that helps freelancers transform their one-person shops into full-service studios. 

Wethos’ co-founders, Rachel Renock and Claire Humphreys, know the pain of scaling a services business first-hand after leaving the agency world to form their own studio. Wethos brings scalable infrastructure to independent businesses and makes it easy for freelancers to team up, seamlessly bill clients, and make payments all without leaving the Wethos platform.

“We want to take the headache out of running a small business,” says Claire Humphreys, COO and co-founder of Wethos. “Our goal is to bring transparency to the market for these services and empower our users to earn more.”

When looking for a banking-as-a-service partner, Wethos knew they would face hurdles due to the unique payment requirements freelancers faced when working across ad-hoc elastic teams. Wethos was looking for a partner that could handle their unique one-to-one-to-many payments challenge while allowing them the flexibility to create a better user experience.

What Wethos built with Unit:

• Free embedded business bank accounts with no minimum balance
• Free debit cards for out of pocket costs and expenses
• Free peer-to-peer transfers by enabling payments between platform users
• Ability to invoice and manage client ACH payments
• Ability to automatically track real-time cash flow and profitability across projects

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Accelerating their product roadmap

Wethos chose to partner with Unit in order to launch embedded banking and payments, citing Unit’s simple but powerful API, experienced experienced compliance team, strong bank relationships, and ability to launch quickly. As a result, they were able to launch their first banking products in just six weeks.

“We wanted to put more money back into the pockets of independents, not build a bank,” said Rachel Renock, CEO and co-founder of Wethos. “By partnering with Unit, we were able to accelerate our product roadmap by two years and make our dream of giving studios access to embedded banking and real-time profitability tracking a reality.”

“Partnering with Unit allowed a team with no previous banking offerings to be able to launch a fully integrated banking and payment solution in weeks,” continued Renock. “Unit not only provided the technical product but the onramp and knowledge that enabled us to launch a complex financial product quickly. They streamlined compliance and were able to remove a lot of the risk associated with building and launching a financial product.”

Ready to bring your own financial features to life? Contact us to learn more.

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Wethos is not a bank. Banking services are provided by Wethos’ and Unit’s bank partner, Blue Ridge Bank N.A.; Member FDIC. The Wethos Visa® Debit Card is issued by Blue Ridge Bank N.A. pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. and may be used everywhere Visa debit cards are accepted.