WorkWhile Names Marqeta’s Simon Khalaf as New CEO

Simon Khalaf, former chief executive of Marqeta and a longtime WorkWhile board member, will now lead the company, WorkWhile announced Wednesday (Feb. 25).

Co-founder Jarah Euston will become company president and chief operating officer, focused on scaling operations and accelerating expansion, the announcement added.

“Jarah’s leadership demonstrated what an AI-native platform can achieve,” Khalaf said. “I am eager to contribute to the institutionalization of our growth, steering both financial stability to our workers and operational efficiencies to our customers.”

In addition to his time with Marqeta, Khalaf has more than three decades experience helping build and scale media and tech firms, holding leadership roles at Yahoo, Verizon and Twilio, the announcement added.

“I’ve worked alongside Simon for over a decade,” Euston said. “He understands this company deeply. With him leading as CEO, I can focus fully on driving growth and ensuring we continue delivering for our workers and customers.”

Meanwhile, WorkWhile is expanding into what it calls “worker-focused financial services,” having recently launched real-time pay, which lets workers access their earnings immediately.

“While WorkWhile’s native AI platform was built to provide people with income, our responsibility extends beyond just pay,” said Khalaf. “Our goal is to help workers achieve stability and succeed in the current economic climate.”

Khalaf appeared on a recent episode of PYMNTS’ “Wage to Wallet” podcast, where he described what happens when that stability is gone.

When wages become inaccessible, households fill gaps using credit cards, overdrafts or short-term borrowing — even when their income streams are steady. The consequences can be severe, he told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster.

“If you’re not paid daily, you’re actually taking a 20% and 30% discount because it means you’re borrowing in order to live between paycheck to paycheck, and you’re borrowing at very high APRs,” Khalaf said.

And as faster payouts become available, they are increasingly helping determine how people evaluate employers. One of the aspects of what makes a “good job” is now speed of pay, something that would have once seemed marginal but now ranks among wages and flexibility, Webster said.

Jobs that do not provide that clarity increasingly go unfilled, even when they offer comparable wages, Khalaf said. On WorkWhile’s platform, the shift is obvious, he added. Instant or real-time pay has reached 91% penetration and is rising.

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