If you happened to be walking over the Millennium Bridge in London in September 2018, you might have spotted a particularly eye-catching ceremony.
A full funeral procession, complete with pallbearers and a real coffin, marching across the river in the late summer sun.
But this was no somber occasion for those involved. Quite the opposite. The “funeral” was dedicated to the “death of payday loans”: the predatory lending practice that saw thousands of low-income workers spiral into uncontrollable debt, its death embodied by the collapse of notorious firms like Wonga. The photo made the headlines in the British press, plastered across the front pages of The Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Times.
Peter Briffett and Portman Wills were part of the mock funeral procession. They organized it, in fact. The coffin, they’re embarrassed to admit, was real—the fake version didn’t arrive in time.
If you’ve met Peter and Portman, you’ll understand this marketing stunt is typical of their dry sense of humor. But it also speaks volumes about their conviction, their vocal opposition to these exploitative financial practices, and about the strong statements they were willing to make to underline those beliefs.
That belief remains as consistent today as it did back then. “If you are a lower-income worker, you will be charged more for goods and services. You pay more interest, you get charged higher fees, and you don’t get access to financial advice,” Peter says. To put it more succinctly, the poverty premium is real.
It is this poverty premium that Stream sets out to address. Peter and Portman are building a definitive platform of workplace finance tools and support, from earned wage access to financial planning to investment, to overcome one of the biggest obstacles to financial security and social mobility. To give millions of people around the world the financial freedom they never saw growing up.
When Peter met Portman
It sounds like the start of a romcom. Peter and Portman met for the very first time at the arrivals lounge of Heathrow Airport in London.
They’d actually been introduced by a friend months prior. Portman was living in Sonoma, California, while Peter was based in London. Both had read about how Walmart was experimenting with flexible pay to retain staff, encourage them to work more shifts, and discourage them from taking on more gig work.
It had clearly set off the same lightbulb in both their heads, and after two separate conversations with the same friend, they were matchmade.
“It started with this great idea: if we can destroy payday lenders and give people flexibility of pay, we can get them to prevent them from going into debt between pay cycles,” Peter remembers.
It sounded revolutionary in the UK; in the US, it caught people’s attention for other reasons. “People couldn’t believe that Europeans are paid monthly. In the US, everyone’s paid weekly or fortnightly, and if you tried to change that, there’d be a riot,” Portman says.
The concept had legs, but how would they know if anyone actually wanted this? They had to find out for themselves. So Portman hopped on a flight to London, and Peter drove to Heathrow Airport to pick him up. Pleasantries were exchanged, but there was no time for hesitation. They drove straight to Windsor, a bustling historic town just a 20-minute drive from the airport.
They spent the next few days speaking to every frontline worker they could find, from shop assistants to restaurant waiters to supermarket shelf stockers. “We asked them how frequently they got paid, whether they had liquidity needs between pay cycles, and whether they would use a flexible pay product through their employers.”
The response was universally positive. It wasn’t the most conclusive or empirical research, but it demonstrated resounding enthusiasm for the simple idea of getting paid as you earned. Even more importantly, it underlined a fundamental truth that Peter and Portman needed to know: that the majority of UK workers are living paycheck to paycheck, with less than £100 in their savings accounts.
“We realized 400 years of banking had failed to provide any sort of service or positive outcome for this sort of population,” Peter says.
With the wind in their sails and arms full of anecdotal evidence to support their hypothesis, Stream came into existence.
Changing minds around a controversial sector
The popularity of the idea was unsurprising—crucially, there had also been demand for payday loans among those who needed that financial flexibility. People who live paycheck to paycheck are easily enticed to take on huge amounts of debt, hence why these sorts of companies were so alluring.
So Peter and Portman knew they had to approach things differently.
That’s what led them to the idea of going down the employer route. From both sides of the equation, offering financial services through your employer seemed like an absolute no-brainer.
For employers, it’s a way of providing stability and security to their workforce. “Employers want their employees to have better financial products,” Portman says. “Banks won’t serve that population, because they see them as a risk—they’ve got volatile income, low pay, thin credit files—whereas for an employer, they’re their greatest asset.”
On the flipside, frontline workers place much greater faith in their employers. “In the sectors we serve, we saw how people trust their employers far more than they trust their bank.” This new approach completely changes the motivation for financial services to be distributed correctly, with positive impacts not just on the business but also on the individual.
And thus, a new category was born—workplace finance. Peter and Portman were chomping at the bit to get started.
“We just thought this was the best idea ever, and every CEO would be en route to our little office in Waterloo to sign up. What type of fountain pen would we get for all the signatures? Would we need security to keep all these CEOs from barging straight in?” they reminisce.
The reality was quite different. No one answered their calls. They quickly realized that launching this new category of financial services through your employer was going to be much harder than they thought.
For one, there was still a significant taboo around flexible pay and earned wage access. Payday loans may have died, but their specter still loomed over the industry. “Employers had an adverse reaction. A fear that this could lead to bad outcomes, and they would be responsible,” Peter recalls.
This also led them to another, less surprising discovery—that corporates are notoriously difficult to persuade and disrupt, especially with regards to a category of financial services that hadn’t been done before. These companies always look for precedent. “They never want to be the first people to do anything,” Portman adds.
This was particularly true in the UK, a country that both Peter and Portman acknowledge has a bias towards the status quo. Take the BACS payroll system used in the UK, which hasn’t changed since the 1970s. Portman explains: “In the US, the common reaction is, ‘Oh, that’s ripe for disruption’. In the UK, it’s ‘Oh, what a stable and robust system’.”
Changing minds and behaviors was going to be far harder than what they’d seen in Windsor.
Stream: A snapshot
Year founded: 2018
Number of employees: 251
Amount raised: £170 million
Total users: 4 million workers reached, across 2000+ brands
Scaling rapidly while remaining faithful to their beliefs
Peter and Portman are reluctant to admit that the mock funeral was their breakthrough moment, but it was certainly a catalyst for attracting attention from the right customers.
Among the thousands reading the papers that day, the striking photographs and the message behind them caught the attention of a senior executive at Rentokil, one of the UK’s largest pest control companies. He immediately saw how Stream could benefit his workforce, picked up the phone, and told them it was exactly what they had been looking for. Rentokil became Stream’s very first client, and things really started to pick up from there.
One of their biggest breakthroughs was through their go-to-market strategy focused on partnerships. Rather than focusing entirely on selling directly to employers, they began partnering with payroll and workforce management companies. This removed much of the friction they’d experienced when selling directly. “By partnering, we could be an addendum to existing agreements,” Peter says, particularly since they were already having to integrate with these payroll or HR platforms.
In general, the hardest part has always been persuading companies to take the leap and get it live with their staff. As soon as employees start using it, it sells itself. “Users become real advocates of this technology,” Peter adds.
The success of these strategies has seen Stream’s momentum continue over the past seven years. Over 2000 brands offer Stream to their employees, currently reaching four million workers. They’re now processing over £1 billion in pay every month.
So how do they scale while maintaining their core impact? It’s not always simple, especially in financial services, where many people have a preconceived negative perception about motivations.
Peter and Portman point to their social charter, a commitment that runs through everything they do and acts as a compass for their decision-making. “Everything we do has to reduce the poverty premium.”
It’s helped them navigate difficult decisions about what to prioritize. It means they decided to keep their team lean (“to serve lower income customers requires a business with a low cost profile”). Crucially, it’s made them strict about where they’re willing to make profits. They point to the transaction fee they charge for flexible pay, which, over eight years, has increased by only 20p.
Peter explains: “It’s very easy to make money when you’ve got a captive audience in financial services, but it’s important that we don’t drive this up just because we can.”
Making money go further
Creating, as they describe it, a “financial tool kit for life” has made Peter and Portman realize the breadth of the challenges they are tackling and the wide range of solutions they need to address these.
After building out their earned wage access product, they now offer a range of solutions, including tracking and budgeting tools, a rewards platform, workplace savings and loan products, and a suite of tools dedicated to financial coaching and education. Their recent rebrand, from Wagestream to Stream, reflects this expansion to a multi-product workplace finance platform.
Solving the poverty premium isn’t binary; rather, they see it as a spectrum. On one end, severe financial distress (such as falling into debt, having your house repossessed, etc.), and on the other end, being financially capable and independent. Through Stream, they hope to guide individuals across the spectrum. Your first encounter might help you manage your bills or cover unexpected costs, but down the line, they want to see you start managing your wealth responsibly, saving, and even investing.
It’s in the data already. “A million people have started saving with Stream, and for around 40% of those, it’s the first time they’ve ever saved in their lives,” Peter underlines. Pensions are next in their line of sight, no doubt fueled by their 2025 acquisition of Zippen.
But what they’ve built is bigger than a range of financial products or a toolkit. It’s a philosophy that stretches across business and employment. For the first time, employers are stepping beyond just paying people and are actually thinking longer term with how that money impacts their employees.
And for frontline workers? A belief that no financial obstacle is insurmountable, no matter what profession you choose. “We can’t make people richer, but we can give them the tools to make their money go further.”
