Payroll & Benefits Infrastructure · Use case

Offer earned wage access

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Short answer

Earned wage access lets employees draw part of their earned pay before payday, recovered from their next salary. The design questions — who funds the advance, whether employees pay fees, and how recovery works — decide both the economics and how the product is regulated.

What this use case is

Earned wage access lets employees draw part of their earned pay before payday, recovered from their next salary. The design questions — who funds the advance, whether employees pay fees, and how recovery works — decide both the economics and how the product is regulated.

Who builds this

HR and payroll platforms
Workforce management tools
Staffing and gig platforms
Employee benefits providers

What your customer sees

  1. 1Sees earned-to-date in an app
  2. 2Requests an amount
  3. 3Receives it quickly
  4. 4Sees it deducted on payday

How Payroll & Benefits Infrastructure solves it

1

Hours or earned pay synced from payroll or time data

Hours or earned pay synced from payroll or time data

2

Available amount calculated under limits

Available amount calculated under limits

3

Employee requests an advance

Employee requests an advance

4

Funds paid out

Funds paid out

5

Deduction scheduled in payroll

Deduction scheduled in payroll

6

Reconciliation after payday

Reconciliation after payday

Want to have

  1. Payroll and time-data integration
  2. Limit rules
  3. Instant payouts
  4. Payroll deduction
  5. Reconciliation
  6. Employee communication

Optional

  1. Financial wellbeing features
  2. Savings options

Design decisions

Funding

Employer-funded
Provider or partner-funded

cash-flow impact versus fees and risk.

Fees

Employer pays
Employee pays
Free

affects adoption and regulatory treatment. [TO CONFIRM: treatment in your markets].

What to put in your RFP

Integration

  • Integration

Limits

  • Limits

Funding model

  • Funding model

Payouts

  • Payouts

Recovery

  • Recovery

Regulatory position

  • Regulatory position

Commercials

  • Commercials
Add these to an RFP

How to evaluate providers for this use case

  1. 1Integration with your payroll data
  2. 2Funding options
  3. 3Regulatory analysis per market

Pitfalls

  • Treating EWA as outside regulation everywhere
  • Over-generous limits
  • Poor recovery when employment ends

What providers will ask you

  1. Employer and employee counts
  2. Pay cycles
  3. Markets

Other Finlane categories that cover parts of this

This use case is solved mainly with Payroll & Benefits Infrastructure. These categories cover specific parts of it and can be tendered alongside it.

Lending & Credit Decisioning

Credit models if advances are treated as credit

Banking-as-a-Service

Instant payouts to employees

Frequently asked questions

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Push meal, wellness or expense benefits to employees via wallets, cards or vouchers.

Scope offer earned wage access with Payroll & Benefits Infrastructure providers

Scope this use case