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OnShift Offers New Way to Tap Senior Living Wages Before Payday

OnShift has a new card in its Wallet.

The Cleveland-based workforce management software firm announced on Tuesday it’s adding a prepaid Visa card option to Wallet, the PayActiv-powered app it launched in 2017 to help senior care workers access earned but unpaid wages.

The move is aimed at giving those employees a way to access some of their money ahead of payday without needing a bank account, according to OnShift CEO Mark Woodka.

Many large employers with hourly workers, including retail giants like Walmart, have in recent years embraced new ways to let their workers access their wages without having to wait for a pay period to end. In the senior care industry, such apps can give providers a new tool with which to compete against retailers and other employers as they seek to attract and retain frontline workers, many of which are paid hourly.

“Many of our customers’ employees are living paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford the monthly maintenance fees of bank and checking accounts. For many reasons, some don’t have bank accounts,” Woodka told Senior Housing News. “The OnShift Wallet Visa Prepaid Card provides a fee-free way to help get unbanked employees banked.”

The new card option allows employees to make purchases anywhere Visa is accepted. Employees must use Wallet to add money to their Visa card, and will incur a $5 fee per pay period with up to three available transactions. However, once they’ve loaded the funds on their card, there is no monthly maintenance fee or cost to withdraw cash from any of the roughly 32,000 MoneyPass ATMs in the U.S.

“Prior to this new enhancement, employees accessed their money through the OnShift Wallet app via an [automated clearing house] transfer. This would typically be delivered the next day,” Woodka said. “This card provides a real-time transfer, eliminating the delays.”

Nearly 1,000 senior housing communities use OnShift Wallet, with about 87% of users spending their earned but unpaid funds on bills, groceries, rent and unexpected expenses, according to data collected by the tech firm. Nearly three quarters (73.5%) of OnShift Wallet users have used the app to avoid late fees, bank overdrafts and payday loans, and a little more than a quarter (26%) of those users make at least one transaction per month.

While these types of services are often touted as ways to give workers more financial flexibility, they also illustrate the growing financial insecurity of the U.S. workforce. Just under half (44%) of all American workers have less than $400 worth of savings in the bank, while slightly more than half (55%) worry about paying for their next unanticipated expense, according to a 2016 employee financial wellness survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The post OnShift Offers New Way to Tap Senior Living Wages Before Payday appeared first on Senior Housing News.

Source: Senior Housing News

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