SurePayroll's Symbiosis

July 02, 2001
Crain's Chicago Business
By Julie Johnsson

Care and nurturing from large companies is crucial to the success of any startup. And landing funding from them doesn't hurt, either. Skokie's SurePayroll has gained all three from a recent partnership with California's Wells Fargo & Co., the nation's leading small business lender. The nation's fourth-largest bank has agreed to market the firm's Web-based payroll and other services to its 1.5 million small business customers.

That's a coup for the 50-employee SurePayroll, which outhust-led market leaders like New York's Paychex Inc. and New Jersey's Automatic Data Processing Inc. during a year of negotiations with Wells.

Regarded as a standard-bearer for online banking services, the $280-billion-assets lender also took an undisclosed equity stake in SurePayroll somewhere in that process.