Monet: unlocking the creator economy

MONET is aiming to unlock finance in the $250bn creator economy with its embedded finance products that seeks to provide near-instant financial inclusion to creators, flexible workers and other creative freelancers worldwide.

Many freelancers, creators, and talent supply top-rated brands via labour platforms or agencies, but they may face significant hurdles in securing timely payment. MONET provides an alternative by offering instant payouts, making it easier for creators to get paid quickly, maintain relationships, and ultimately drive their business forward.

For many, traditional financing options are not feasible. Generally, set up as sole traders rather than companies, these creators often lack the trading history or turnover required to qualify for traditional business financing. Compounding the problem, most contracts in this space allow for long payment terms ranging from 30 to 90 days.

The platforms and agencies that deal with these creators often struggle with cash flow due to the long payment terms from the brands they work with, yet they need to pay their creators quickly to maintain relationships. But MONET’s Fintech layer aims to eliminate these barriers, allowing freelancers, creators, and talent to access much-needed funding. As a result, agencies and labour platforms no longer have to struggle with cash flow.

A report by Visa found that 93% of creators are willing to change platforms, potentially in favour of instant payouts for their work.

MONET founder Jacob Casson is looking to take advantage of a gap he believes sits between the existing relationships that platforms and agencies have with millions of creators, and the large amount of capital flowing down from large enterprise brands through to these creators. Therefore, Jacob’s aim is to ensure that MONET is poised to transform the creator economy as the finance layer behind influencer platforms, creative freelancer agencies and affiliate networks.

MONET aims to enable platforms and agencies to drive financial inclusion to communities of creators, freelancers and SMEs who often find it challenging to access timely financing, without taking credit risk on these creators.

What does MONET do?

MONET, the embedded fintech layer, was created for creative agencies and digital labour platforms. It enables them to use MONET to generate new revenue streams through charging creators an early payment fee.

Their hero product, EarlyPay, integrates into platform and agency infrastructures to provide the equivalent of employee salary finance or earned wage access to the millions of freelancers and creators across the world. According to Jacob, EarlyPay can be best understood as “earned wage access for the world’s creators and flexible workers, accessed via their platforms and agencies”. Creators simply get paid early, while the platforms and agencies are able to streamline their financial operations, creating a new revenue stream for them as a fintech-enabled business.Currently, the company’s infrastructure can pay global networks in 130 countries and is estimated to be up to eight times cheaper than the cost of using the most popular methods Paypal and bank wires according to MONET’s research.

MONET has also launched a second product in its fintech layer, Perks, which acts like a white-label benefits programme for platforms and agencies to provide to their communities of creators, and flexible workers.

MONET launched Perks with the aim of making it easier for platforms to provide tailor-made perks to their creative communities, in their own branding, granting communities access to offers, discounts and experiences across business tools, travel, software, insurance, finance and more.

Perks is also an affiliate model that aims to enable the participating platforms to generate referral fees from the vendors via MONET.

Who is MONET helping?

Brands often pay slowly, and creators want fast payments, putting these platforms under pressure to manage both sides of their ecosystem. MONET’s product EarlyPay claims to enable them to pay their creators instantly, with their own branded fintech product.

Goldman Sachs estimates that the creator economy is worth $250bn and is anticipated to reach $480bn by 2027. Within this market, MONET’s initial focus is on the $21bn branded content segment where enterprise brands buy services from suppliers, or creators, via agencies and platforms, often known as influencer marketing. Internal Marketing Hub shows that 18,900 agencies and platforms offer branded content marketing services globally, and 83% of creator payments are made on inefficient and high-cost payment rails.

According to the business, creators and other suppliers doing work for large brands, may miss out on many of the benefits of being full-time employees, such as being part of an employee benefits programme. Therefore, MONET’s product Perks aims to deliver this via their platforms and agencies.

The fintech believes their business is compatible with any industry where large companies buy the services of small suppliers and flexible workers via platforms and agencies.

How does MONET work?

MONET looks to solve the cashflow issue faced by many in the creator economy by buying brand invoices from platforms to brands. Then, MONETs technology which integrates into platform and agency payment operations enables creators to request early payment. With its embedded finance layer, a platform can offer instant payments to creators once contracted work is completed, at the choice of the platform whether they would like to charge the creator a fee or offer it as a free service.

Platforms can add their own fee in addition to MONET’s EarlyPay fee, they can also offer deals to its community of creators using Perks, which increases customer loyalty. Moreover, using MONET’s platform simplifies and quickens the payments to creators from brands.

In addition, the embedded finance layer is white-labelled, and the platform keeps control of and in contact with their creators and brands.

The next steps

MONET closed their previous funding round in Q4 2022 with participation from investors, including a Monzo co-founder. They have since pivoted, with a £10.5m funding facility secured for the financial side of its business. The round was raised to support its pivot and sought to drive sales ahead of a 2023 institutional round and launched EarlyPay in the same time period. MONET are using this to enable them to service the existing demand and to seize the macro-opportunity through 2023.

With the groundwork laid out, MONET is now looking to raise equity though the easy-to-use private market platform, *FlowwMarkets.

*Floww Markets Limited is a company authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Firm reference number 980098.

The information and imagery contained within this article does not represent the opinions of Floww. Floww does not have a view on opinions provided by MONET in this article and elsewhere where they may be expressed, and is not responsible or liable for the information within this article