Atlanta Fed
As my colleague Lali Shaffer pointed out last month, most of us like getting paid ASAP. For households living paycheck-to-paycheck, waiting to get paid can create problems: Fees for late bills. Deferred medical care. Utility shutoffs. And of course, expedited access to earnings can be helpful for everyone, whatever their financial situation.
Perhaps that’s why earned wage access (EWA) is looking like one of the killer applications for instant pay. In September 2023, The Clearing House reported that EWA is the fastest-growing RTP Network use caseicon denoting destination link is offsite.
The more I learn about earned wage access, the more I think of prepaid cards 15 years ago. Some cards had useful features and benefits. Others, often sold via celebrity endorsements, were more complicated and costly than it might appear on initial inspection. Standard disclosure requirementsicon denoting destination link is offsite—the cereal-box-style presentation describing the nutritional content and costs of prepaid cards—made a real difference in the market. Consumers could compare products more easily.
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