News

Visa, PayActiv alliance offers employees pre-payday access to earned wages

March 8, 2019

Visa and  financial wellness fintech provider PayActiv, have teamed to provide early access to earned wages through the Visa Direct push payments platform, according to a press release.

The program allows participating companies to send earned wages directly to their workers via direct deposit to a Visa debit card or reloadable prepaid card, including the PayActiv Visa prepaid card.

Workers can use the PayActiv mobile app to view totals for hours worked and wages earned, officials told ATM Marketplace sister publication Mobile Payments Today. They can then use Visa Direct to transfer the funds to their debit or prepaid card account. 

Benefits of the PayActiv Visa reloadable prepaid card include:

• Real-time access to earned but unpaid wages, tips, and commissions.
• Access to the entire suite of PayActiv financial wellness services.
• No fee for loading earned wages on the card multiple times within a pay period.
• No cardholder fees for use at merchants merchants in the U.S. that accept Visa debit cards.
• No fee on cash withdrawals at MoneyPassATMs.
• Feature-rich mobile app that tracks the user's spending and access to earned wages.

"Currently more than 50 million Americans struggle to pay bills, and over 78 percent struggle paycheck to paycheck," a Visa spokesperson said. "This trend is leading to productivity loss at work as 1 in 3 U.S. employees say they are distracted by personal finance."

The PayActiv Visa card is issued by Central Bank of Kansas City, an FDIC-insured institution. Transactions are processed by Silicon Valley-based i2c Inc.