GoDo and Highnote provide financial inclusion for millions of Americans

By Edlyn Cardoza

GoDo, a FinTech company offering same-day, no-fee advances to wage earners, has partnered with Highnote, the world’s most modern card issuance platform, to create the GoDo Card, a new card program that offers underbanked workers immediate access to interim wages with no-fee advances.

Powered by Highnote’s card issuance platform, the GoDo Card enables financial inclusion with the following benefits:

• No Fee Financial Account: insured accounts with no minimum balance and no monthly fees.
• Fully Functioning Debit Card: The GoDo Card can be used to access cash at ATMs, pay bills on time, and make online and in-store purchases.
• Interim Wage Access: GoDo offers earned wage access, meaning cardholders can access a portion of their wage as soon as they finish work instead of waiting on a traditional pay cycle.
• Payment Parity: The GoDo Card provides working Americans who previously lacked access to the card and digital payments the same payment experiences enjoyed by well-banked Americans.

Some banks charge a fee for account holders who cannot maintain a minimum balance. According to a US Postal Service Study, this causes the average underserved household to spend 9.8% of their earnings on fees and interest charges and often resort to payday loans and other predatory lenders. The Card improves financial wellness by eliminating minimum balance and overdraft fees and giving members earned wage access to avoid predatory lenders and minimise debt.

“Our mission is to create economic inclusion by making banking easy and affordable for hard-working Americans that need access to interim earnings and no-fee financial products,” said James Ray, GoDo’s CEO. “The GoDo Card is the cornerstone of that effort, and Highnote was the only card platform that could deliver what we need, including future capabilities for our users that wouldn’t have been possible using any other solutions in the market today.”

The GoDo card was created using Highnote’s modernised platform, which provided key benefits, including:

• Speed to Market: By serving as both a processor and program manager, Highnote provided GoDo with a market-ready card at a rate unmatched by other virtual card platforms.
• Differentiation: Highnote’s modular capabilities allow GoDo to build the functionalities that set them apart from competitors.
• Reduced Cost: The Highnote platform allows GoDo to provide no-fee access to interim wages by reducing operational costs while generating revenue from interchange fees. With the Highnote ledger, GoDo can minimise bank transfers and thus save costs and avoid charges to cardholders.

“We built Highnote to enable companies like GoDo to create truly unique and game-changing payment solutions for their customers,” said John Macllwaine, Highnote’s Co-Founder and CEO. “The earned-wage-access market needs modernised payment solutions that can power innovative digital experiences and we’re here to deliver that.”

This partnership is a significant milestone for Highnote, as they launch with GoDo as the first customer in the earned-wage access vertical. This is a $12 billion market that Highnote aims to address by building more innovative payment solutions for financial inclusion.