2021 ETA Star Award — Response to COVID-19: Homebase

ETA has recognized three companies with the payments industry’s highest honor, the 2021 ETA Star Awards – Response to COVID-19, presented at the ETA Strategic Leadership Forum. This year’s winners are Celero Commerce, Homebase, and NCR Corporation.

The 2021 ETA Star Award — Response to COVID-19 was created to acknowledge the important work of the payments and fintech industry in keeping commerce running and going the extra mile for their customers and employees in response to the pandemic. The winners were judged and selected by the ETA Awards & Recognition Committee, composed of a panel of industry executives of ETA member companies.

The following is a detailed account of Homebase’s award-winning activities in response to the pandemic.

Q. Homebase played a pivotal role in educating policymakers and the media about the devastating impact of COVID-19 on small businesses and their employees.
A. The company’s extensive customer base allowed it to track in real time how many employees were — and were not — clocking in for work across cities, states, and industries. This data shined a light on an otherwise difficult-to-monitor segment of the U.S. economy and was used widely by the media, policymakers, economists, and the Federal Reserve.

Additionally, Homebase built a financial resource site for businesses and workers to find critical information, provided live support from certified HR professionals for its customers, and reconfigured its blog and newsletter with resources to help over 1 million workers navigate the crisis. The company paused billing and refunded annual contracts to allow customers to get back money they desperately needed, and it created solutions to allow employees to access their pay sooner. Homebase believed in the small business community and created innovative solutions that made a significant difference to both employees and employers.

Q. Why did Homebase decide to be transparent with the data they had from their customer base with academics, policymakers, and journalists?
A. At the start, our goal was to raise awareness about the dramatic impact that COVID was having on small businesses. In March, we saw businesses closing at an alarming rate before the press realized the economic impact the virus would have. We were sending our data to economists and local reporters to raise the alarm bells. It was clear small businesses were going to need real help.

As the impact continued, we realized we needed to get this data and story into as many hands as possible, so we made it public. It was used widely at the beginning to help shape policy responses to COVID, including PPP programs, and afterwards to understand the impact and ongoing policy responses. We’re very proud that we could find a way to help small businesses through our data and support the local, state, and federal governments trying to help during unprecedented times.

Q. How did your customers respond to the tools and information you provided to support Main Street businesses?
A. We heard stories from many of our customers on the mass confusion they faced trying to navigate the various public and private resources that were being made available. Our customers trust us to help them run their business so when PPP Round I was delayed with queues at the larger U.S. institutions, we helped them find relief through smaller, approved PPP lenders with whom we had relationships. When new legislation and rules were enacted like FFCRA, we made our certified HR experts available for free. Our customers relied on these live HR experts to help them properly manage unemployment claims, update their policies, and get coaching for how to deal with the various personnel challenges they were facing. We also provided Homebase software for free to all healthcare businesses and to small businesses facing financial challenges

I think these two customers perhaps can best sum up how our customers felt about how we provided support to Main Street businesses — Tiffany Rodriguez from Tiffany’s Cleaning told us, “You literally are the best thing we have subscribed to for our business. You have given us more information on this than any other service we have, and it means a lot.” Paul Lupino from the City of San Francisco shared, “[Homebase] makes scheduling Disaster Service Workers long term or short term a breeze. Homebase is an essential tool to help the fight against COVID. We are saving lives together!”

Q. Homebase built a new payment solution to allow employees access to wages early and instantly. Was this a feature you were planning, or was it a response to your customer’s needs?
A. Everything we spend our time building at Homebase is driven by the voice of our over 100,000 local business customers — they passionately raise requests to help them address problems they have in their business, one of which was helping their employees meet their financial needs. We had started work on Cash Out in 2019, but when COVID hit we decided to accelerate the product so that employees who were hit with expenses between paychecks could turn to our free solution for help. Our solution enabled employers to offer this benefit to their employees without requiring any change to any payroll providers or existing processes, and it allowed employees to get faster access to their wages, via ACH or debit card.