What a Retirement Integration Needs Before an ADP Marketplace or Gusto Partner Listing

The listing is a compliance review in disguise

A payroll platform that wants to offer a retirement integration to its customers through a marketplace, whether ADP Marketplace, Gusto's partner program, or another platform's app directory, will go through a review that looks like a technical integration checklist and is actually a compliance and trust review. The marketplace operator is lending its brand to your product. It wants to know that the product does what it says, handles data the way it claims, and will not generate complaints or regulatory letters.

Specific requirements vary by marketplace and change over time; check the current partner terms for whichever listing you are pursuing. What follows is the set of questions every review asks in some form, and how the Gigaverse payroll partner integration answers them for a contractor-focused product.

Question one: who is this for?

Retirement integrations on payroll marketplaces are overwhelmingly 401(k) products for W-2 employees. Human Interest's Embedded Retirement (https://humaninterest.com/solutions/embedded-retirement) and similar recordkeeper integrations serve employer customers who need a plan, often because a state mandate now requires one. CalSavers reached every California employer with one or more W-2 employees on January 1, 2026 (https://gusto.com/resources/states/retirementmandates).

A contractor-focused retirement app is for a different population: the 1099 payees the platform's customers pay, who are excluded from every state mandate and cannot join any employer plan. Making that distinction explicit in the listing avoids the two failure modes reviewers worry about: a customer thinking the product satisfies their state mandate when it does not, and a customer thinking they are offering a benefit to contractors when they are offering a resource.

The positioning that passes review: "A retirement resource for the independent contractors your business pays. Not a 401(k). Not a plan you sponsor. Does not satisfy state auto-IRA mandates for W-2 employees."

Question two: what data does it touch?

Reviewers want the minimum viable data scope, stated precisely.

• •Required: nothing from the platform. A payee can open the app and enter income manually.
• •Optional, with payee consent: year-to-date gross payments, so the contribution estimate starts from real numbers. The payee adds expenses, including mileage at the 2026 rates of $0.725 per mile January through June and $0.76 July through December, and the engine computes net earnings, self-employment tax, and the resulting Roth IRA, SEP and Solo 401(k) limits.
• •Never: bank credentials, payout instructions, or any ability to modify, hold, or redirect a payment. Money moves from the payee's own bank account to the payee's own retirement account on the payee's instruction.

That scope is narrow enough to satisfy most data-minimization reviews and it is also the scope that keeps the product on the right side of worker-classification rules.

Question three: what does the customer see and say?

Reviewers read the admin-facing and payee-facing copy. Two rules keep it clean.

For the employer customer: the admin toggle reads "make retirement resources visible to your contractors," not "add a retirement benefit." The help text states that the employer does not contribute, does not deduct, and is not a plan sponsor.

For the payee: the card in the payee portal describes an optional resource for independent workers, funded by the worker, with a subscription price stated up front and a link to the provider's how we make money page.

Question four: how is everyone paid?

This is the question that separates a listing that clears review from one that stalls. Reviewers know that retirement products have a history of asset-based and per-account compensation that later surfaces as a complaint.

Gigaverse charges payees a flat subscription. It pays the payroll platform a share of that subscription revenue or a flat per-seat licence fee. It does not pay per enrollee, per deposit, per account opened, or basis points on assets. The reasons are legal. Payments tied to account openings or deposits resemble transaction-based compensation under Exchange Act Section 15(a) and FINRA Rule 2040. A share of advisory fees would violate the rule that an SEC-registered adviser cannot share fees with unregistered parties. Where the platform is compensated for referrals above $1,000 in twelve months, SEC Marketing Rule 206(4)-1 requires a written agreement and a promoter disclosure to the payee, and some states require paid solicitors of advisory clients to register as investment adviser representatives. Gigaverse supplies the agreement and the disclosure text.

Stating this in the listing application, in these terms, tends to shorten the compliance conversation.

Question five: what is the product's regulatory posture?

Reviewers will ask, and the answer must be accurate rather than aspirational.

• •Gigaverse is pursuing SEC RIA registration. It does not provide personalized investment advice until that is approved.
• •The Roth IRA is held at a FINRA/SIPC-member broker-dealer in the payee's name. Gigaverse is software and does not take custody.
• •Gigaverse offers a Roth IRA today. Applications for a Solo 401(k) and a SEP IRA are open at gigaverse.ai/solo-401k and gigaverse.ai/sep-ira: you apply, a person confirms your eligibility and sends your plan documents, then you fund before the deadline. It also provides the contribution math, tracking and CPA hand-off.
• •No guaranteed returns. Growth illustrations use 6%, the rate the Treasury uses in its own projections, and are labeled as illustrations.
• •No claim of FDIC or SIPC protection for the app itself.

Question six: what happens when the rules change?

The one scheduled change reviewers should know about is the federal Saver's Match, effective for contributions from January 1, 2027. Lower-income savers receive up to $1,000 from the Treasury on qualifying contributions, including Roth contributions, under MAGI phase-outs of $20,500 to $35,500 single, $30,750 to $53,250 head of household, and $41,000 to $71,000 joint, with the payment landing in a non-Roth IRA. IRS Notice 2026-48 (August 7, 2026) took comments through October 5, 2026. Many 1099 payees on a payroll platform will qualify. The product logic is described on the Saver's Match Roth rule page, and the free tools let a reviewer see the engine's output for a sample payee.

A pre-submission checklist

• •Positioning copy that says "not a plan, not a mandate solution, for 1099 payees."
• •Data scope document: optional YTD gross with consent, nothing else.
• •Admin and payee copy reviewed for classification-safe language.
• •Compensation statement: subscription revenue share or per-seat licence only.
• •Regulatory posture statement matching the bullets above.
• •Marketing Rule agreement and disclosure text on file.
• •Support escalation path defined between the platform and Gigaverse.
• •Security questionnaire completed for the API surface (REST and MCP, with a human-confirm step before any account is opened).

Where Gigaverse fits

Gigaverse is a subscription retirement app for the 1099 payees a payroll platform's customers pay, designed to sit alongside, not compete with, the platform's 401(k) integrations. Today it offers a Roth IRA through a FINRA/SIPC-member broker-dealer; it opens Solo 401(k) and SEP IRA plans through its custodian partner, with applications open now, and provides the contribution math, tracking, and a year-end CPA hand-off alongside them. It is pursuing SEC RIA registration, does not guarantee returns, and pays platforms only through subscription revenue share or flat per-seat licences. Integration and listing support details are on the payroll partner page.