One month after launching its InstantPay solution, Checkbook.io is back in the fintech headlines with news of its partnership with event production booking platform Castifi. The hub for event and media production managers is leveraging technology from Checkbook to make it easier to ensure that short term workers get paid as quickly as possible.

“Many of the cast and crew members that we work with can’t wait 2-3 weeks to get paid, which is the industry norm,” Castifi founder and CEO Rum Sheikhani said. “Our users regularly tell us about the difficulties of managing everyday expenses and (the) uncertainty around when they will get paid.” Sheikhani noted that the partnership with Checkbook has helped workers get paid in two business days or less, which she called “a game changer for our core business.”

Checkbook offers a secure payments alternative for companies that avoids the inefficiency – in time and cost – of paper checks. The company’s Digital Checks enable recipients to get payments online without requiring them to create an account or enroll in a specific digital wallet. With Checkbook, as soon as the recipient authenticates their bank account, they will see that the money is being sent to them. Recipients can deposit the funds online, print their digital check and make a remote deposit capture with their mobile device, or get their funds transferred instantly on their debit card.

Culver City, California-based Castifi was founded in 2015. The company has raised $600,000 in seed funding, and helped event managers in more than 250 productions find, hire, manage, and pay their cast and crew. Most recently, Castifi was involved in the digital series, Grown, produced by Adaptive Studios.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Checkbook demonstrated its digital check technology at FinovateSpring 2017. The company celebrated surpassing the two million user mark last fall. Check out our profile of the company from last December, in which Checkbook CEO P.J. Gupta explained how accounting firms are taking advantage of digital check technology.

Digital check innovator Checkbook.io unveiled Instant Pay today. The new offering streamlines the funds transfer process for businesses that want to send money to individual and business bank accounts.

Instant Pay works by circumventing the need for payment recipients to go through a sign up process to receive their funds. Instead, Instant Pay requests information directly from the recipient’s Mastercard or Visa branded debit card. This eliminates the requirement of other sensitive information such as their personal details, account number, or routing number.

The technology works because Checkbook.io doesn’t use the antiquated ACH infrastructure, which requires recipient onboarding and takes three to five business days to move funds from one account to another. Instead of running the payment on ACH rails, the funds are transferred using VISA Direct rails, enabling the recipient to see the money in their account within 18 seconds (though the company discloses that the process could take up to 15 minutes).

Businesses can integrate the solution using Checkbook.io’s RESTful API. Along with Checkbook.io’s other tools, the API is publicly available and can easily be integrated into a business’ existing payment process. The company charges a flat, $1 fee per transaction, regardless of the check amount, and allows a maximum of $10,000 per transaction.

Checkbook.io most recently presented at FinovateSpring 2017, where company CEO and founder PJ Gupta showcased the company’s Digital Checks solution. Founded in 2015, Checkbook.io has raised an undisclosed amount of funds from investors such as Tim Draper, AngelList, and more. For more on Checkbook.io, check out our recent feature of the company’s accomplishments.

In the year since our last look at Checkbook.io, the company has partnered with Baxter Credit Union, teamed up with fellow fintechs, and topped more than two million users of its Digital Check technology.

Checkbook.io also partnered with LuLaRoe to enable the e-commerce provider to issue a million-plus check sales tax refund disbursement. “That was another major milestone for us,” said founder and CEO of Checkbook.io, P.J. Gupta.

Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Checkbook.io has dozens of enterprise partners, and has already processed hundreds of millions of dollars since inception in 2015. The company demonstrated its Digital Check technology at FinovateSpring 2017, and we caught up with Gupta recently to talk about the way accounting firms in particular have taken to his company’s Digital Check solution.

“Paper checks are a major irritant for accountants,” Gupta explained, highlighting some of the key advantages of Digital Checks for accounting professionals in a conversation this fall. The technology integrates readily with widely-used accounting platforms including Quickbooks, he said, as well as the in-house systems of partners like Accountants World. Co-founder and CEO of Accountants World Dr. Chandra Bhansali noted that his firm had a designated project manager “specifically to leverage all of the benefits of Checkbook.io.” Bhansali added, “We’re committed to a future where no paper check or paper reconciliation will ever slow us down.”

Opening up the technology to accountants as a white-label solution via API was important. “They wanted to do it from their portal, their application,” Gupta said. “And there aren’t dozens, but hundreds of accounting software packages. So we have provided an API where companies can build a white-label integration, and they are now able to send or request Digital Checks from their own accounting packages.”

And because Checkbook.io replicates the paper check writing experience, there is no learning curve, on boarding, or enrollment.  As a more affordable and efficient alternative to paper checks, Digital Checks can save companies time and money, including when it comes to having to issue stop payments or re-issue checks.

As an example, Gupta points to the “extremely simple and lucrative” use case with Baxter Credit Union mentioned earlier. “They were spending more than $20 to $30 per check, overnighting these checks to their recipients for auto loans,” he said. “And with us, it’s going to be less than $1. End-to-end tracking. No more ‘check is in the mail’, ‘got lost in the mail’, etc.”

Looking toward the future, Gupta pointed to both new funding and new platform features as part of the plan for 2019. He said that the company had reached the “millions” stage using just seed funding and early stage, and was now looking to “go to the next level” of “tens of millions” in the year to come. More partnerships with banks and financial services companies, including potential collaboration with a fellow Finovate alum, are also on the agenda.

Gupta also talked about new ways to help customers get paid quicker. “Right now when you get your Digital Check in your email, you can do a direct deposit and the funds can take anywhere from overnight to three days to clear depending on how the originator is set up,” he said. “What we’re doing is instant pay, the ability of the recipient to input their debit card and get the cash instantly. Literally. As soon as they log in, the money will be in their bank account.” The feature is expected to be introduced early in 2019.

Learn more about Checkbook.io and P.J. Gupta in our extended 2016 interview.