[daveungerer]

(Background: I own a payroll software company, not in the USA though).

I can't say too much because I don't want to expose anything confidential, but there's definitely good money in this. We've declined advances from similar companies. At least no-one has asked us for data proactively, which would be an insane thing to agree to, and which is what's being reported in TFA. In fact, the only way I'd agree to something like this is if the there was a simple approval step (e.g. employee gets an e-mail that says "Company X is attempting to access your payroll history, click this link if you agree."). But some people believe that negates the usefulness of their offering. Well, so be it. No sharing our data then.