Refyne

Refyne is an India-based earned wage access (EWA) and financial wellness provider that partners with employers so their full-time and contractual staff can draw a portion of already-earned salary before payday. Its flagship product, Salary On-Demand, was launched in 2021 and is delivered through a mobile app that supports 24/7 withdrawals, digital KYC and repayment via automatic deduction from salary. The company positions the offering as an alternative to payday or personal loans: instead of interest on the credit used, employees pay a slab-based convenience fee tied to the transaction size, and larger borrowings are subject to eligibility and pre-qualification checks.

Around the liquidity product, Refyne has assembled a broader financial wellness suite structured on the pillars of financial education, liquidity, protection and savings. This includes MoneyGuru financial literacy content, financial coaching, savings and planning tools, insurance distribution partnerships, and a more recent curated RuPay credit card marketplace featuring products such as the IDFC FIRST Power+ and Scapia cards. The platform integrates with employer HRMS systems at no stated integration cost, with go-live in as little as 24 hours on the base model or three to ten days where customisation is required. The company states that it operates in line with Reserve Bank of India KYC guidelines and holds ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications.

Founding story

CEO and co-founder Chitresh Sharma was a serial entrepreneur who started an IT outsourcing and marketing company in Bengaluru at 19 and in 2013 co-founded Glasgow-based cashback rewards platform Swipii. He returned to India in 2020 and spent time on surveys and hypothesis testing to establish product-market fit, combining research showing limited personal finance awareness in India with his exposure to Salary-on-Demand in the UK, which led to Refyne.

Business model

B2B2C: Refyne contracts with employers, which offer the platform to their workforce at no cost and with no liability to the organisation, while employees transact directly through the Refyne app.

Employees pay a slab-based convenience fee determined by the size of the Salary On-Demand withdrawal rather than interest on the amount drawn; the company also distributes credit, insurance and other financial products through the platform.

Traction

The company reports more than 500 client organisations, coverage of over 8 million employees, roughly INR 48,000 crore in salary flow, 10 million lives impacted, 3 million transactions and 1 million financial literacy interactions per quarter, across 23 industries. Earlier data points show 100 companies and 300,000 employees around the time of QED's 2021 investment, 400 corporates and 4.6 million employees by mid-2023, and reported growth of 68x in transacting users and 165x in transactions over the first year of operations.

Latest developments

Refyne has introduced a curated RuPay credit card selection on its platform alongside its Salary On-Demand, MoneyGuru financial literacy and savings offerings, and reports scale of 500+ organisations and 8 million-plus covered employees.