By Stephen Chandler & Thomas Diehl

Today, we’re excited to announce our investment in Aslan, leading its oversubscribed $5m Seed round alongside Redstone VC and several prominent fintech-focused Angel investors. Aslan supercharges employees’ pay, allowing them to get paid as they earn and receive market-leading cashback rewards on all of their spend, through the Aslan app and card.

Neither the Earned Wage Access (“EWA”) industry, nor the employer-based rewards market, are new, and several companies have been successful in recent years in innovating in the space. On the EWA side, most of these focus on the “shift worker”, where the need to access salary as it is earned is evident, but leaving a huge gap in the working population untapped. James Gozney, CEO & Founder of Aslan, saw a huge opportunity in the “office worker” segment, representing over 60% of the working population in Europe, where both employers and their employees could benefit from a solution like Aslan’s. On the rewards side, employers have shown their strong desire to implement solutions, yet most suffer from cumbersome processes and therefore see lacklustre employee adoption. By enabling card-based rewards, Aslan sees daily use. 

HR leaders are constantly looking for ways to attract and retain talent, with financial wellbeing at the forefront of their priorities, especially as companies and employees navigate an uncertain economic climate. For employees, compensation remains the number one concern of the salaried worker. It is estimated that a third of all UK employees struggle to budget on a monthly basis across all income brackets, as well as over 70% of individuals experiencing financial stress at least once a year. In the current context of real wage growth stagnation, salaried workers are increasingly hungry for proper financial rewards and alternative solutions to costly credit cards, loans and advances.

Enter Aslan, a highly engaging financial wellbeing employee benefit, enabling financial services directly from payroll. Aslan makes employees’ pay go further through its mobile app and card, where salaried employees can enjoy market-leading cashback and rewards on all their spending, while getting paid as they earn, allowing for more visibility on daily earnings and better budgeting.

Despite going live only a few months ago, Aslan has delivered a successful roll-out of the product, signing multiple high-profile employers in a wide range of industries from financial services to luxury goods, where adoption and user engagement within their employee base has been excellent, proving that Aslan can quickly become an everyday card. As we know from our previous investments in the employee benefits space (e.g. Cobee, acquired by Pluxee in 2024), building user adoption is often challenging but crucial to prove significant value to the employer. Aslan has already successfully demonstrated its ability to improve the financial wellbeing of the employees of its customers.

Lastly, we were highly impressed by James’ knowledge of the EWA space, his ability to build and execute quickly, and the remarkable progress he has achieved in a few months since formally launching Aslan. Through their unique competitive positioning, and compelling product offering for both employers and employees, James and the rest of the Aslan team are well-positioned to build a category leader in the EWA & employee benefits space, and we’re excited to support Aslan on the next stage of their growth journey.

Why Notion? A note from the Founder:

We chose Notion because they have the best hands-on operational experience of any VC we met. Right from our first meeting onwards, they not only understood the vision, but what it would take to get there and (crucially) where they could help. They are truly professional investors, from their diligence process through to their immediate, hands-on assistance from their extensive and knowledgeable portfolio team, even before formally investing. It is abundantly clear to me how they move the odds in their favour, and why they have such a strong track record of outlier success in Fintech. We could not be more excited to have them aboard.

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