Rain, a startup offering employer-integrated earned wage access (EWA) app coupled with financial-wellness features like overdraft alerts and spending trends, has raised $75 million in an all-equity Series B round.
The round was led by Prosus at a post-money valuation of $340 million. Rain plans to use the new funds to help it add credit card and saving products to its roster, co-founder CEO Alex Bradford, exclusively tells TechCrunch.
Around 35% of households in the U.S. with an annual income below $50,000 are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 32% in 2019, per a report (PDF) by Bank of America published in October.
Paycheck-to-paycheck populations rise with age and can be anywhere in the U.S., though this report indicates they are highest in the South. Biweekly paychecks can be hard to wait for when bills are due any day of the month.
EWA platforms allow employees to get a portion of their paychecks early with a small fee and can be less predatory than other get-cash-now methods, like high-interest payday loans.
Rain aims to differentiate its presence and attract employers who want to help employees access earned wages between their paychecks with automation.
“Because we are connected to all the major payroll and timekeeping systems, and we built automated tooling that makes it super easy for us to onboard employers, there is very minimal manual work for employers through onboarding, and once we go live, there is hardly any work day-to-day or pay period-to-pay period for them,” said Bradford.
The Los Angeles-based startup, founded in 2019, has onboarded over 2.5 million employees and distributed over $2 billion in earned wages, it says. The Rain app says it helps employers retain employees, too.
Rain targets mid-market and enterprise customers with over 300 employees. It charges a fee equivalent to an ATM fee, an average of around $3 per transaction, for an instant transaction. However, employees can also use the free ACH option, which credits their account up to the next business day.
However, the startup does not want to be another EWA app in the crowded market. It already offers a financial education portal, one-on-one financial coaching, and a free tax filing and refund service via the taxation solution provider april, Bradford says.
Such services beyond EWA actually account for 70% of its monthly adoption rate, Bradford says, with the EWA at 30%.
“For us, what success looks like over time is that the user needs EWA less and less because they are now saving more and more,” Bradford said.
The Series B funding, which saw participation from Nextalia Ventures and Spark Growth Ventures, and Rain’s existing investors including QED, Invus Opportunities, and others, will help the startup expand further beyond a simple EWA app.
In Q3, the startup plans to launch an EWA-secured credit card with a dynamic credit limit based on the verified earned wages it has from the employer payroll systems.
The startup is also working on a product to be rolled out later this year that makes it easier for employees to use their Health Saving Account (HSA) by letting them spend on any card and get reimbursed. Furthermore, it will bring saving accounts later this year with features including auto-save and rewards.
Rain’s funding comes amid signs of a more favorable environment for a fintech ecosystem that had seen nearly flat growth in recent years. Funds including Ribbit Capital are raising more money, while startups including Plaid, despite raising a decent-sized round of $575 million, have seen a decline in their valuation — indicating a mixed environment in fintech.
Venture funding in global fintech companies declined 45% year-over-year to $50 billion in 2023, with a similar funding level recorded last year, per PitchBook data shared with TechCrunch. In 2025 to date, $13.1 billion has been raised by global fintech startups. However, the average deal size has increased 20% year-over-year to $21.94 million from $18.27 million in 2024. Specifically in the EWA space, venture funding also grew 19% year-over-year to $569 million last year.
Unlike employer-integrated platforms like Rain, employee-side EWA platforms such as Earnin have faced crackdowns from regulators over allegedly “predatory” loans for the last few months. Rain’s approach to enabling savings and financial awareness alongside providing EWA from the employer’s side with automated features helps it standout.
“Building a more comprehensive platform of financial wellness products will certainly help us realize our mission, which ultimately is to help millions of people get on the path to financial freedom,” Bradford stated.
The startup, with 175 employees, is also scaling its go-to-market by building a sales team and investments in sales enablement and marketing and channel partnerships. It also plans to invest more in tooling to add more convenience for employers managing their services.
In 2023, Rain raised a $116 million Series A funding round that comprised $66 million equity and $50 million in debt.
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