A payday advance app owned by collapsed lender Greensill Capital and used by NHS nurses during the pandemic has gone into administration.

The Covent Garden-based company, Earnd UK, claimed to serve ‘thousands of UK employees across multiple NHS trusts’ by allowing users to access their pay before their regular payday if they needed cash additional, similar to programs run by rivals Wagestream and Hastee.

Like its parent company, Earnd has tried to bolster its reputation by hiring Westminster heavyweights on its advisory board, including former Tony Blair home secretary and Labor peer David Blunkett, and director Dame Louise Casey. General of the Troubled Families Unit under David Cameron and former Homelessness Czar for Boris Johnson.

The company, which also had former public procurement officer Bill Crothers among its directors, has offered the service to around 10 NHS trusts. for free but made money by charging private sector employers for the service.

Three of these contracts were negotiated through central NHS corporate service provider, NHS SBS and

An NHS SBS spokesperson said it was “trying to ensure that staff can continue to access flexible salary payments through our NHS employee app, MySBSPay, in the future”.

Lex Greensill has reached an agreement with the NHS trusts shortly after buying Earnd UK in late 2019, using cash from a new $655m (£475m) investment from SoftBank, a sprawling investment conglomerate run by Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son.

Earnd UK, formerly known as FreeUp, reported a loss of over £615,000 in the last six months of 2019, according to its latest accounts.

Greensill also reportedly dispatched one of his own advisers, former Prime Minister David Cameron, to lobby the Australian government to adopt Earnd while he attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January last.

The Mail on Sunday reported that the offer was rejected as it was deemed too similar to payday loans.

Some critics have argued that payday advance schemes can push consumers into cycles of debt and should be regulated the same as payday lenders. Companies usually deduct the advance and all fees and charges from wages on payday.

Crothers, a former civil servant who ran the UK government’s procurement division before joining Greensill’s board in 2016, was made a director at Earnd after Greensill acquired the company. He resigned from the board in February. Praising Earnd’s business last year, he said it provided “meaningful benefits to employees” and would “help their financial well-being”.

Earnd’s Australian branch was acquired by Wagestream last week for an undisclosed sum. However, with no buyer for the remaining part of the business, Earnd UK went into administration, resulting in job losses for 30 workers.

A spokesperson for Grant Thornton’s trustees said: ‘The joint trustees are overseeing an orderly liquidation of the remaining businesses.

“Unfortunately, the circumstances of the administration meant that the majority (30) of the company’s employees were terminated as part of this process, with a small number retained to help with the administrative process for a short period.