Consumer advocates are very alarmed by the underlying power imbalance between wage-access providers and the low-income workers they serve, exposing once again Silicon Valley’s penchant for dressing up in utopian visions the dystopian brutality of its desire to make money. “If you think about someone working at Walmart, Target, someone like that,” says Keith Corbett, of the Center for Responsible Lending, “their pay is going to maybe be $150 to $200 for a week. They’re desperate for their money, so they’re willing to give up some. But what they’re going to find is when payday comes, the money is not going to be there. They’re going to be in the same boat. These companies know that.”
