Brightside Transforms Business Operations with Helix

Key Challenge

Brightside offers a revolutionary approach for employers looking to help their employees navigate financial crises such as averting a car repossession, securing shelter during emergencies or managing debt. Brightside takes a human-first approach to helping employees stabilize their finances and reduce stress.

“We help employees dealing with financial instability navigate that financial crisis so they can show up to work less distracted… So they can be safer, healthier and happier,” says Brightside Head of Partnerships, Anthony Strike.

“Our Financial Assistants can help with any type of financial need, whether it’s saving for a home or just the next emergency, reworking debt into sustainable payments, managing bills, building credit, or even finding a place to sleep or food to eat.”

In order to carry out its important work, Brightside relies heavily on the performance of its Banking-as-a-Service (“BaaS”) provider. “We're not a bank, and we really don't want to be. We want partners to do that so we can focus on our clients,” Strike says. 

In 2023, Brightside needed to replace its BaaS provider. “We weren’t getting the data, support and reliability we needed. In order to serve our many employers – some with hundreds of thousands of employees – we needed scalability and reliability. We couldn’t risk having some hiccup or outage get in the way of helping our clients.

“We interviewed probably 10 different BaaS providers and Q2’s Helix quickly rose to the top. It was appealing that Q2 has been at this for such a long time and we had high confidence in their technical reliability. Plus, Q2 wasn’t trying to keep us at arm’s length from our bank partner. We need to stay close to our bank for compliance reasons, and Q2 has been able to act as the connector between us.” 

“The effort that Q2 put toward making the accelerated timeline work was a monumental lift. Some of the biggest successes we’re having with Helix are what we don't see. We don’t have the challenges and disruptions that we were seeing on our prior platform. Our support tickets are down and a lot of our processes are moving faster and more smoothly, which means we can scale very quickly.” 

Anthony Strike 
Head of Partnerships
Brightside

Results

• Helix goes live in just 5 months vs. 9+ months – a “superhuman effort”.
• A significant drop in support tickets, allowing more focus on innovation rather than troubleshooting.
• Seamless scalability enables Brightside to serve up to 6X more clients and add features.
• Thousands of dollars saved in fraud prevention using Helix’s tools and processes.
• Improved process for handling exceptions/manual approvals.
• Improved compliance processes.

Solutions

For Brightside, upgrading to Helix was crucial to expanding its impact. In what Brightside calls a “monumental lift,” Q2 was able to convert from its previous BaaS provider to Helix within five months. “After agreeing to a nine-month implementation timeline, an issue with our previous provider forced us to significantly shorten the timeline. Our investors and Board called the accelerated migration a superhuman effort. I was thrilled with the sheer number of people and subject matter experts that Q2 threw at us to move off our old BaaS platform in less than two quarters. 

“It was a really smooth migration thanks to how responsive and flexible – but still compliant and safe – the Helix team was,” Strike says. “Now, we don't have the data issues that used to take up our support team’s time. We have a lot more control over our product, flexibility with the types of features we can offer, and the ability to layer levels of security on those features.”

The Helix Difference

Brightside’s upgrade to Helix has been a game-changer for its current and future operations. “The migration happened just as we were expanding our largest customer to a much larger population. We're also going live with several other large employers, so maintaining that stability and functionality – and doing it at 3, 4, 5, 6x volume without disruption or deterioration of service – is critical.” 

In less than a year with Helix by Q2, Brightside is now better equipped to fulfill its mission: improving the financial lives of working families, and in turn, helping employers maintain a healthier, more focused workforce.

Strike said, “Having a reliable, stable BaaS partner means we can get clients what they need when they need it. This means managing emergency savings funds, administering hardship programs and helping people find a place to sleep. It means administering our cash advance product that quickly gives people $100, pulled from their next paycheck, when they’re in a pinch. A lot of these situations are urgent and Q2 makes sure our products work and that funds are available to our working families. And that goes back to our mission. So, we're supporting our mission through Q2.”