My Big Idea: Payroll rewards platform Aslan

Hi James! What's your elevator pitch for Aslan?‍

Employee compensation is the number one focus of employees and the biggest cost for businesses - £1 trillion a year in the UK alone. Aslan offers a payroll-embedded rewards platform, app and cards that supercharge employees' pay, while saving employers' costs through reduced administration and tax efficiencies. Aslan is three times more cost-effective than an equivalent pay rise and is used 30x a month by our average user.

What does the market need it?

Taxes on both employers and employees are rising sharply, meaning pay rises are both harder to deliver, and increasingly inefficient. Following the rise in National Insurance in April 2025, getting an additional £100 to an employee through payroll now costs UK businesses £180-250.

And yet today we need £130, after tax, to buy what £100 would have bought just before COVID. This has put huge stresses on employees across most income brackets. The market needs to supercharge compensation, without an equivalent increase in costs.

Aslan enables that. We embed flexibility and rewards directly into the pay process, so employees see real, tax-free value every single day. Businesses get the engagement, admin-savings and impact they deserve, and direct cost savings on top.

Where is the business today?

We launched in 2024 with backing from Notion Capital, Redstone and a group of experienced angels. Since then, we’ve partnered with forward-thinking employers in sectors from financial services to manufacturing.

The numbers are exciting, with high adoption rates and the average employee using Aslan 30x per month, plus real, measurable savings for clients. Our tax-efficient gifting, work-from-home tax-free allowances and pension salary sacrifice enablement products are saving clients thousands in National Insurance contributions, while materially increasing employees’ take-home pay.

What made you think there was money in this?‍

I’ve spent years investing in and advising Fintech businesses. And what I realised is that at its core, you and I can actually only ever do four things in financial services: we can transact, borrow, save or protect (through insurance). Every financial product, whether from a shiny fintech app or your traditional bank, ultimately serves one of those four functions.

Since the 1700s, banks have competed hard for control of one thing: your current account. That’s because it’s the first time you touch your salary, and is therefore the gateway to the rest of your financial life.

But the current account isn’t the source of the Nile - payroll is! Embedding financial services into payroll eliminates costs. There’s virtually no room for fraud or ‘embellishment’ - employees and providers have near-perfect, real-time information with which to work. There’s no room for accidentally missed direct debits either.

Virtually every major Fintech success in the past few years has come from payments (e.g. Stripe, Klarna, Wise or Adyen), or neobanks disrupting the current account (Revolut, Monzo, Nubank or Chime). Yet they all still rely on current accounts. Our payroll-embedded rewards platform is the tip of the iceberg; Aslan can fundamentally change how financial services works, making it 10x more efficient for the whole industry, and every consumer. The margins on that are gigantic.

What's your biggest strength?

The Aslan app and card are used 30x a month, by our average user. Streamlining admin and reducing costs for employers, whilst bringing a genuinely engaging experience to employees focused on their pay, is proving to be a magic recipe for success in the employee benefits market.

At the heart of it all is the Aslan card. Being mobile-first and card-based means we fit effortlessly into users’ everyday lives, meeting them exactly where they already are, in the moments they’re earning, spending and making financial decisions.

What is the secret to making the business work?‍

It’s about ensuring alignment of interests between Aslan, clients and users. If either employees or employers don’t care, the benefit fails. If it’s hard for payroll, it gets dropped. We make sure everyone is involved, from the CFO to the employee and that everyone gets clear value. For us, that means obsessing over user experience, keeping integration simple and never losing sight of the fact that this is about people’s money.

How do you market the company?‍

We focus on showing proof. That means case studies, live demos and walking clients through exactly how Aslan would run alongside their existing processes. Once they see it’s easy, measurable and how often employees use it, the decision comes quickly. Real-world impact is the core of our marketing strategy.

What funding do you have? Is it enough?

Enough is an interesting word! As a founder, is it ever enough?

We’re well funded at an oversubscribed seed round led by the VC Notion Capital, with Redstone and prominent angel investors coming in too. We’re deploying those funds strategically to grow both our team and our technology. Like any early-stage company, we keep a close eye on burn rate and have been meticulous in hiring the right people for the right roles. It’s not easy, but we have a long-term plan and a target that has put us in a strong position to scale with confidence.

Tell us about the business model‍

Our model is B2B2C. Employers offer Aslan to their teams for free, and we charge them a simple subscription fee. Some features create savings for the employer through admin reduction and tax efficiencies which more than offset the cost. On the employee side, the secret sauce is in the rewards, which we generate from the card usage and merchant partners.

What were you doing before?

I was co-leading European Financial Services at a private equity fund. It was intense, high-stakes work that taught me a lot about scaling businesses. That world gave me incredible exposure, but I wanted to create, not just optimise. I wanted to deliver value, not just extract it.

I’ve always been driven by the urge to build something meaningful from scratch. That clarity landed for me one morning in my last job, when I asked myself, ‘If I made it to the top here, would I be happy with my career?’ The answer was no, so I knew I had to make a change.

Entrepreneurship offers a different kind of challenge - to be successful, you must lead through inspiration, assemble a team that believes in a shared mission and not just envision a better way, but actually deliver it. So, I left to build something different. Something better.

Are there any technologies you've found useful?

We’re big on keeping our stack lean but powerful. Beyond Slack, GSuite and HubSpot, we are experimenting with Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor and ChatGPT to streamline operations throughout the business from tech to GTM. I’m constantly asked by entrepreneurs what banks are the best - for scalability, security and ease of use, Wise is head and shoulders above the rest. And HSBC Innovation Banking for credibility with enterprise sales.

I am not sure I could get much done without Superhuman to optimise my inbox. It’s great. Although I also want to try Fyxer…

What is the future vision?

Payroll-embedded solutions will be the next big shift in both employee benefits and financial services, and there’s a £10bn business to be created in the space. We’re building the platform that will lead that charge.