Most veterans of the financial technology space can confess to some cynicism about new technology and products. Consumers, especially those with genuine day-to-day financial struggles, don’t seem to see much improvement.

We’re all still waiting for blockchain and mobile payments to transform the financial system. But change is happening all around us, and consumers’ lives are being improved in significant ways by these advances. Last week saw the announcements of two new types of loans that increase borrowers’ flexibility, and Green Dot CEO Steve Streit, discussing his bank’s successful first quarter results, discussed how the way people are paid is changing.

A major theme at FinovateSpring last week was innovation in the lending space. Several new solutions offered borrowers more freedom in managing their debt obligations. Two notable examples were Kasasa’s Take-Back loans, which allow users to “take back” their overpayments to use however they like, which was a Best in Show winner, and mortgage lender Mr. Cooper, formerly known as Nationstar.

Kasas offers a PFM-type dashboard to give more visibility into its loans, and how soon they will be paid back depending on how much is paid back each month. The company says this will benefit banks because they will have better, more responsible customers. This works across multiple loan types, and offers a multitude of possible use cases. For example, in auto finance, overpayments on a loan could comprise an emergency fund for the inevitable repair bill.

“Years of work have gone into our new patent-pending lending experience,” said  John Waupsh, chief innovation officer at Kasasa. “It’s a complete re-think of a term loan. We started with what the real consumer need is — getting out of debt quickly — and then built the technology and the compliance to give borrowers visibility and control via take-backs. Kasasa Loans allow any financial institution to quickly get to market with a lending experience that consumers demand.”

Also at Finovate, Mr. Cooper, the nation’s largest nonbank mortgage servicer and originator, according to the company, offered a new take on the mortgage. “The mortgage industry has historically focused on the loan – how much is due, the due date,” said Kevin Dahlstrom, chief marketing officer for Mr. Cooper. “We’ve tried to shift that focus to the home – how much of it you own, which is not something most people know.” This allows the company to recommend — and execute on — strategies for optimizing debt, such as trading high-interest credit card debt for a home equity loan, second mortgage, or even a personal loan.

Mr. Cooper also offers data on the value of and improvements to neighbors’ homes, which Dahlstrom said the company jokingly refers to as the Nosy Neighbor feature, but this data can be important in determining the value of your home. This data comes from the real estate site Xome as well as public records, Dahlstrom said.

The common theme is both transparency and flexibility, as well as an explicit concern for borrowers’ financial health. Banks are criticized for not having customers’ best interest at heart, relying on customer mistakes for fee revenue. Services such as these could help correct that notion, and part of the credit must go to the nonbank lenders that made transparency in lending more common.

On the bank’s May 10 earnings call, CEO Steve Streit was asked about the company’s SimplyPaid program, which allows Uber drivers, for example, to “cash out” at any time and put the money earned onto their cards. He was asked where else this was popular outside Uber. His reply:

What’s interesting is that our early belief was that it would be all gig economy, and that’s turned out not to be the case. There’s probably more interest, believe it or not, from regular W-2 employees who are finding — trying to find ways to keep their W-2 low income wage workers, minimum wage workers, more engaged, showing up to work more often, not calling out sick and paying them daily really helps people to be more engaged with their job. And then a lot of these traditional W-2 workers, retailers and others, have a component of their workforce which is part-time, or it could be 1099, whether it’s factory workers, delivery people, that kind of thing. So I would actually say that more traction has come from the more traditional employers side of the aisle than actually the gig side.

With more alternatives to bad loans such as payday loan, and protection from late payment fees by the ability to draw money earned before the formal pay period ends, are both very good things. Bank that look to these examples and offer similar benefits to these customers should make some happy customers.