FinovateFall Best of Show winner Clockout on bringing earned wage access inside financial institutions

This episode of the Finovate podcast features a return conversation with Juan Jurado-Blanco, founder and CEO of Clockout, celebrating his back-to-back Best-of Show wins at both FinovateSpring 2026 in San Diego and FinovateFall 2026 in New York. Juan, who has built earnings access products since 2022, explains how Clockout helps financial institutions embed earned wage access (EWA) directly into their digital banking apps rather than leaving the space to third-party fintechs like Chime and Dave or predatory payday lenders. He outlines the improvements made between the two demos, including a new digital banking integration, a better-guided payroll linking process, and enhanced features such as managed jobs and activity tracking that give users clearer visibility into their earned wages.

The conversation explores why keeping EWA within banks and credit unions matters: institutions already hold the customer relationships, compliance infrastructure, and capital needed to deliver the service, while also benefiting from direct deposit retention and instant transfer fee revenue. Juan discusses Clockout's ideal customer profile, ranging from institutions with 250 million dollars in assets up to 20 billion dollars, totaling roughly 3,000 to 4,000 potential institutions, with the best fits being forward-thinking leadership teams focused on attracting younger customers, increasing lifetime value, or growing non-interest income.

He also shares lessons from the Finovate audiences, noting plans to revamp Clockout's admin console for easier configuration and to combine payroll and banking data for better real-time underwriting and decision-making, with that data initiative targeted for the first half of next year.

Looking ahead, Juan predicts a larger wave of financial institution adoption of EWA as banks launch their own validated products, which he expects will pull users away from third-party and employer-based alternatives toward a single, employer-portable platform tied to their primary bank relationship. He closes with advice for early-stage fintechs attending Finovate: come fully prepared with a polished live demo and a clear list of target contacts to make networking more purposeful.

More info:

Clockout: https://www.joinclockout.com ; https://www.linkedin.com/company/joinclockout/

Juan Jurado Blanco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-jurado-blanco-012b58121/

Greg Palmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregbpalmer/

Finovate: https://www.finovate.com; https://www.linkedin.com/company/finovate-conference-series/

FinovateFall: https://informaconnect.com/finovatefall/



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