The new alliance represents an expansion of the MasterCard WorkPlace Solutions, a comprehensive suite of flexible payment programs designed to promote administrative efficiencies and cost savings by providing businesses with convenient and secure methods of disbursing work-related funds, while simultaneously controlling spending and integrating data with accounting software and enterprise resource planning. This new offering directly enhances the MasterCard Payroll Card, an innovative program launched last year that provides a new way to distribute wages to company employees and represents an alternative to issuing payroll checks. Under the terms of the agreement, National Payment will make it possible for companies using the MasterCard Payroll Card to replace traditional paper pay stubs with an efficient, electronic payment solution. By doing so, MasterCard and National Payment are enabling companies to achieve fully paperless payroll disbursement, thus boosting efficiency and time savings - without compromising security or privacy protections. Through this automated self-service option, employees may instantly access their EZStub 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via their employers Intranet or the World Wide Web. Employees no longer have to ask their Human Resources representatives for copies of their stub since National Payment maintains pay information for up to two years. The electronic stubs are stored in a secure web site that is password protected to ensure privacy. Employees can read the statement, print it and/or email it to another address (a great benefit for accountants and others needing to verify income). The Payroll Card Opportunity In order to better understand opportunities and barriers for growing the Payroll Card business, MasterCard conducted an online survey among corporate payroll decision-makers and influencers through the American Payroll Association website in September 2003. Of the organizations surveyed, only 6% are currently offering Payroll Cards to their employees. There is a considerable opportunity to grow Payroll Cards since 19% of the surveyed organizations are considering offering Payroll Cards while an additional 26% are gathering information. An overwhelming majority - 96% -- indicate awareness of payroll cards. Organizations looking into Payroll Card programs typically are from the service industry, have employees that do not use direct deposit and have over 5000 employees. Organizations can realize significant cost-savings through Payroll Card programs. While the business case for replacing checks with cards is considerable, that benefit is even greater with an e-stub solution. The average cost of an e-stub solution is $0.15 per advice vs $1.20 for a paper based statement (NACHA 1999). Additionally, companies eliminate costs associated with paper checks, including distribution (average of $1.90 (Celent, 2002)) and paper advice cost of $1.19 (Cedar, March 2000), for a total potential savings of up to $100/year per employee.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now