Brand

brand messaging

Position

Story

Description

Terminology

Tagline

Mission

Pillars

Key messages

Proof points

Personality

Brand voice

Tone of voice

Design

Logo

Color

Typography

Graphics

Application

Downloads

Logo

Color

Typography

Iconography

Media assets

Brand messaging

Create powerful narratives that engage, inspire, and build lasting connections with our audience

Brand position

Our brand position describes the unique place we occupy in the market and the specific value we provide to our target clients. It is our North Star. Everything we communicate should ladder up to what’s captured here. That’s how we ensure a consistent message.

Lenders

For mortgage and personal lenders looking to lower costs, improve staff efficiency, reduce credit and compliance risks, or enhance the borrower experience, Argyle provides the fastest, most cost-effective, and most accurate way to automate income and employment verification. As the leader in payroll connectivity, Argyle delivers a 4 to 5x superior hit rate than other solutions at a fraction of the price—all while reducing friction and processing timelines.

Everyone else

For financial services providers looking to reduce costs, streamline critical processes, and improve the customer experience, Argyle provides streaming access to the income and employment data they need to automate high-friction, mission-critical workflows and power complex decisioning models. Compared to other solutions, Argyle is more cost-effective, time-efficient, and reliable, with a 4 to 5x superior hit rate at a fraction of the price.

*Note that Argyle's brand position will evolve as the company’s strategy changes.

The story we tell

Consumer finance has an efficiency problem

Service providers need income and employment data, but obtaining and verifying that data is either expensive, labor-intensive, high friction, or unreliable (and, often, many of these things at once).

Enter Argyle

We save businesses time and money by providing them with streaming, real-time access to income and employment data, so they can automate critical workflows, reduce risks, and provide their customers with exceptional experiences. And we do it all through payroll connectivity.

Since 2018, we’ve brought together the brightest minds in the game to build fast, cost-effective, consumer-permissioned connections between payroll processors and businesses of all kinds. Today, businesses that use Argyle benefit from coverage that’s superior to the three largest credit bureaus plus hit rates 4 to 5x higher than all other data providers—all at a fraction of the cost.

The implications for our clients are simply powerful: continuous access to reliable, direct-source data that works with their front- and back-office systems to streamline operations and modernize their products and services. When it comes to income and employment data, nothing is more accurate, more cost-effective, or more efficient.

Describing Argyle

Shorter

Argyle is the leading payroll connectivity platform. We make it safe and easy for consumers to connect their payroll accounts to third-party websites and apps, so businesses have fast, cost-effective, real-time access to the most trusted network for income and employment data.

Longer

Argyle is the leading payroll connectivity platform. We make it safe and easy for consumers to connect their payroll accounts to third-party websites and apps, so businesses have fast, cost-effective, real-time access to the most trusted network for income and employment data. With Argyle, businesses run verifications and background checks, fund accounts, switch direct deposits, calculate premiums, advance wages, and more.

Important brand terms

Payroll connectivity

Payroll connections

These are the terms we use to describe our brand category. These are terms we want to own. In support of that, we always characterize the connections we enable as being “payroll” in nature.

Correct: With Argyle, consumers connect their payroll accounts to your system or app.
Incorrect: With Argyle, consumers connect their employment records to your system or app.

Platform

The totality of our offering. Argyle is a payroll connectivity platform made up of numerous solutions, products, and tools.

Income and employment data

This is the good we exchange via payroll connectivity. 99.9% of the time, we say income and employment together (and in that order). Occasionally, character limits in applications like PPC ads and social media posts force us to abbreviate. In that case, we shorten it to income data. We never say payroll data.

Employment data

The exception to the above rule is background checks, which only involves verification of employment. If you are creating content specifically for the background checks vertical, use employment data.

The Argyle Data Network

The term we use to describe the web of connections we’ve built between payroll providers, gig platforms, and third-party businesses as a means of exchanging income and employment data. We allow businesses to access this network via payroll connectivity. We often describe it as “the most trusted network for income and employment data.”

Consumers

When we are talking about our end-users (our customers’ customers) in a generic, high-level way (i.e., not speaking directly to our customers about their specific customers), we use the terms consumer/consumers.

Correct: Argyle covers 210 million consumers.

Incorrect: Argyle covers 210 million customers.

Customers

We use the word customers to refer to two distinct audiences: our customers (i.e., the businesses that buy and implement Argyle) and our customers’ customers (i.e., the consumers who connect their payroll accounts via Argyle Link). When using the word customer, it’s important to distinguish between the two. Say our customers or Argyle customers when referring to the first audience and your customers when referring to the second. Avoid saying “our customers’ customers.” The word consumers is a better fit in those instances.

For some industries, we have the option to get more specific with our terminology and avoid customers altogether: borrowers — when writing or talking about the lending industry; gig workers — when writing or talking about the gig economy; applicants — when writing or talking about background checks.

Our tagline

Simply powerful payroll connections

Build modern financial services on the most trusted network for income and employment data

Simply

Emphasizes the unequivocal power of our payroll connections while hinting at our ease of use and implementation

Powerful

Our connections and coverage are stronger and more robust than the competition. We enable our clients to do more, convert more, and aspire to more.

Payroll connections

The product category we own. Our wheelhouse.

The reason we’re here

Our mission

We’re building the universal network for consumer-permissioned income and employment data to modernize financial services in ways that improve business efficiencies and transform lives.

Our vision

A comprehensive system of real-time connectivity, where every payroll provider, business, and consumer can exchange income and employment data effortlessly, securely, and to everyone’s benefit.

Our brand pillars

Clients can trust Argyle to modernize their financial services via market-leading technology built on a set of core principles.

Reliability

Argyle’s coverage of U.S. consumers is higher than the three largest credit bureaus. Coupled with our investment in conversion-optimization technology, our platform produces a hit rate that’s 4 to 5x better than all other data providers. And unlike paper documents and credit reports, we return direct-source data in real time, for utmost accuracy when you need it most.

Security

Protecting personal information is our top priority. For the sake of both the businesses and consumers who use Argyle, we operate with complete transparency and don't compromise or cut corners when it comes to data security. Our rigorous security framework includes ISO 27001 certification and SOC 2 Type II compliance.

Scalability

Argyle is purpose-built to flex with the needs of businesses through variable market conditions and at every stage of growth. Whether you’ve recently completed a Series A or an IPO, Argyle enables the org-wide automations you need to scale operations, and our platform has unbounded capacity to handle even the highest demand volumes. Meanwhile, our usage-based pricing model ensures you never pay for more than you need.

Ease of use

From back-end implementation to our front-end consumer interface, Argyle delivers an exceptional experience for you and your customers alike. Our approach to documentation, design, and support prevents the headaches of technology adoption and eliminates the frictions that compromise conversion. With Argyle, once complex workflows become fast and simple.

Key brand messages

Use these as notes and talking points to inform more in-depth conversations about Argyle.

Argyle is the payroll connectivity platform of choice for leading businesses

  • More than [N] customers operate more efficiently and securely by partnering with Argyle, including [X, Y, and Z].

Argyle streamlines operations and drives staffing efficiencies

  • Our platform connects businesses directly to consumers’ payroll accounts, instantly delivering all of the data that businesses need to complete income and employment verification, run background checks, switch direct deposits, set up automatic loan repayments, offer earned wage access, and more

  • This replaces PDF uploads, phone calls, emails, manual document reviews, and days/weeks of tedious customer back-and-forth. 

  • Fewer manual interventions = fewer labor hours = lower labor costs

  • Our platform can do in moments what otherwise takes our clients and their customers hours or days to complete.

Argyle reduces internal and external costs

  • The automations Argyle enables translate to lower labor costs.

  • When it comes to Income & Employment Verification, clients can realize an 80% reduction in costs. 

  • Unlike credit bureaus that charge per report pull, there is no cost for reverification.

Argyle lets you build a more exceptional customer experience

  • With Argyle, your customers log in to their payroll account once to instantly meet all of their income and employment verification requirements—no more searching for paystubs and tax forms, uploading documents, endless email chains, or phone calls.

  • Argyle Link, our consumer-facing interface, is clear, guiding, friendly, and intuitive. As a result, our average hit rate is 4 to 5x higher than other providers.

Argyle reduces risks

  • Argyle eliminates the need to ask your customers for paystubs, tax forms, and other documents to prove income and employment, which are easy to forge.

  • Argyle reduces the number of humans who come in contact with your customers’ private data. This makes data breaches and Fair Lending noncompliance less likely.

  • Argyle offers continuous, real-time payroll connectivity, which ensures lenders are always working from true and accurate income and employment data. This helps lenders uncover discrepancies at the verification stage, lowering first payment default risk.

Argyle offers superior coverage

  • Argyle is the vanguard of payroll connectivity. We’ve been building our income and employment data network since 2018. 

  • Argyle’s coverage of U.S. consumers is higher and more accurate than the three leading credit bureaus. (One-third of traditional credit reports contain errors.)

  • Argyle returns an average hit rate that is 4 to 5x better than other data providers.

  • We can return 170+ data fields per connected account.

  • We cover 85% of the US workforce or 210 million consumers.

Argyle proof points

Stats and figures you can use to prove the superiority of our solutions.

Universal

85%

US workforce covered

50+

payroll platforms covered

25+

gigs covered

99%

of Fortune 1,000 supported

220M

US consumers

450

payroll and gig platforms

8/10

login attempts succeed

80%

lower income and employment verifications costs

75%

of gig workers get paid via debit cards

Mortgage

55%

of borrowers verified. Mortgage lenders see a majority of their users verify income and employment with Argyle

80%

lower verification costs compared to credit bureaus or manual verifications.

$0

re-verification cost. Lenders can pull the borrower information they need, as many times as they need it, at no additional cost

Lending

85%

of the US workforce covered. With the use of alternative lending data, lenders can confidently expand their services to customers with little to no credit history.

80%

lower verification costs compared to credit bureaus or manual verifications.

24/7

data on demand. Argyle’s continuous access allows lenders to pull the income and employment data they need when they need it.

Banking

75%

increase in deposits. Consumers can update their direct deposit and fund their bank accounts effortlessly with Argyle.

50%

customer retention increase. Enhance customer loyalty post-deposit acquisition via Argyle.

$38

per user, per month. The amount of additional revenue banks can unlock when consumers switch direct deposits with Argyle.

Gig

8/10

login attempts succeed. Consumers are able to connect their gig accounts via Argyle most of the time.

75%

of gig workers get paid via debit cards, not direct deposit. Argyle lets businesses Increase conversions with seamless debit card payout switching.

59M+

US workers (36% of the US workforce) are 1099. Grow your customer base by tapping into the fastest-growing segment of the workforce.

Our brand personality

We want our customers to feel empowered and certain that they are well-positioned and ready to embrace the future of finance.

We do so by providing bold leadership, vision, and innovation in a new product category. But because our clients tend to be more conservative about change, we do so without losing sight of what’s practical. We are grounded in experience and expertise, and guide our clients toward consumer finance’s fast-approaching future, step by step and at a pace that feels exciting but manageable to them.

To strike a balance between the transformational and practical, we follow a 70/30 rule:

70%

practical
knowing
guiding

30%

visionary
pioneering
unconventional

Another way to think of Argyle’s personality is in terms of personality archetypes:

70%

“Sage”

Goal

To help clients meet their business objectives through insight, knowledge, and new processes

Reputation

smart, trusted, thoughtful, data-driven

Marketing niche

Provide practical advice about performance improvements rooted in facts and experience

30%

“Magician”

Goal

To help clients transform. We want them to give up what’s old and broken and create exceptional experiences for their customers that anticipate the future and set them apart from the competition

Reputation

visionary, charismatic, idealistic, creative

Marketing niche

Inspire change for the better

When people think of Argyle, we want them to think of us as:

The authority

We are the payroll connectivity experts. We are unflappable in our confidence that consumer-permissioned, direct-source income and employment data is the future. Our cool, collected self-assurance turns heads and instills trust in our audience. They look to us for information and insight on this exciting product category.

Inspired

We bring refreshing energy and a new point of view to a historically stodgy and static landscape. We are solving old problems in new, creative ways that cause others to stop and take notice.

A facilitator of innovation

We thrive on bringing together our payroll connectivity expertise with our clients’ industry-specific know-how and other solutions in their tech stack to drive innovation for consumers. We are first to lead but always ready to learn, forge connections, and build partnerships in service of a more interoperable, efficient, and effective future of finance.

Reliable

Not only is our platform reliable in terms of functionality and network performance, our team can always be counted on to step in and provide answers and solutions when our clients need it most.

Approachable

We are human and relatable, and make people feel comfortable without sacrificing our professionalism. Argyle is the “person” our clients want to be seated next to at a networking event or grab a drink with after work.

Our brand voice

Use these tips and guidelines to express our personality.

The authority

  • We know Argyle is the future and best solution of its kind, and we aren’t afraid to say so. We make confident claims about our performance and what we enable for clients.

  • We back up claims with proof points. We make sound research the basis of any argument.

  • We showcase the insights and opinions of SMEs from within and outside of Argyle. (Being well-connected with thought leaders is itself a signal of expertise.)

  • We leverage proprietary data analysis to make original claims.

  • We avoid words that soften and hedge our message. (e.g., “Businesses build modern financial services on Argyle.” NOT “Businesses can build modern financial services on Argyle.”)

  • We always use the active (not passive) voice. (e.g. “With Argyle, lenders verify income and employment in minutes.” NOT “Income and employment is verified in minutes by lenders who use Argyle.”

What we mean

smart, confident, knowledgeable, established, self-assured, unflappable, and a little bold

What we don't mean

superior, esoteric, academic, domineering

A facilitator of innovation

  • We write and talk about our relationships with clients and other third-parties as true partnerships. When it comes to financial service innovations and making a difference for consumers, we are in it together.

  • We don’t assume our audience understands what we understand about payroll connectivity, but we don’t speak down to them either. 

  • When we introduce a niche term or concept, we define it or provide avenues for our audience to get the information they need to understand it (e.g., hyperlinks to additional information or a glossary).

  • We treat, talk, and write about our clients as the experts in their respective fields. We are always learning from them about the real-world applications for our market-leading payroll connectivity products.

  • We develop FAQs section, page, or blog post for different use cases, industries, products, and topics.

  • We use images/graphics to make concepts easier to understand and to accommodate visual learners.

  • We make available easy-to-digest implementation and onboarding content that helps prospects understand what they are in store for and the lift involved.

What we mean

informative, consultative, guiding, leading, synergic

What we don't mean

subordinate, intermediary

Reliable

  • We call attention to Argyle’s performance proof points. 

  • We name drop clients (with permission) and use client quotes as social proof.

  • We provide clients and prospects with direct access to our team and return messages promptly. If we don’t have answers immediately, we let them know when to expect one.

  • We are transparent about bugs and data source changes that affect performance and what we are doing to address them.

What we mean

trustworthy, on your team, there for you

What we don't mean

subservient, boring

Inspired

  • We demonstrate hyper-confidence in our solutions and passion for our mission and vision (without resorting to exclamation points).

  • We use “magical” and disruptive words like “transform” and “revolutionize” effectively but judiciously. 

  • We create “what if”/visionary content for every industry that paints the picture of a world in which Argyle is used to its fullest extent. We link to it accordingly on industry pages.

  • We host and participate in trendspotting webinars/panels and publish trendspotting interviews/think pieces that offer glimpses into consumer finance of the future.

What we mean

refreshing, creative, innovative, original

What we don't mean

abstract, sentimental, imaginative, unproven

Approachable

  • We avoid overly technical explanations and tech jargon as a rule. (Developer-facing collateral is an exception.)

  • We use long, complex sentences sparingly. Short and straightforward is generally best. 

  • We read written communications out loud before we publish. Does it sound like something a person would actually say?

  • We demonstrate understanding and Identify our clients’ and prospects’  motivations and pain points before launching into what makes Argyle great.

  • We relate everything back to the real world and real people, and back up concepts and ideas with examples when possible.

  • We avoid slang, colloquialism, and exclusionary language (e.g., we say labor hours, admin time, or admin hours NOT manhours)

  • We aren’t opposed to making a pop culture reference here and there or dry jokes on occasion.

What we mean

conversational, personable, likable

What we don't mean

casual, unpolished, salt of the earth

Our tone of voice

While our brand voice is intrinsic and applies to all mediums, our tone is attitudinal, and that can vary depending on the platform.

Light-hearted

Serious

Business casual

  • In general, we strike a “business casual” tone—that is, conversational but never unprofessional.

  • In some applications, like open letters, we are serious but certainly not solemn. Think of it, instead, as being seriously impassioned about our mission, vision, present-day impact.

  • In other applications, like social media posts and blog posts, we have license to be a little more lighthearted. Any humor or playfulness should stay in the realm of dry/witty—not silly/exuberant—and it should be sparing and natural, never forced. Think parenthetical asides and subtle winks as opposed to goofs and exclamation points.

© 2023 Argyle Systems Inc.