Weavr’s whitepaper, titled “Flexible benefits cards: Employee choice, business control”, highlights the impact that fintech, and embedded finance in particular, is having on business applications, such as those utilized by HR teams for employee benefits schemes.
The latest report shared by Weavr has found that 50% of UK-based benefit managers were “searching for new employee benefits solutions, and 60% of them would value a specific fintech solution, ‘spendable benefit cards’, as the financial feature of choice.”
Spendable benefits cards are potentially on track to become “an established feature of HR tech,” according to the Weavr report.
Spend cards provide a way for payments to be handled within “a digital business, specifically those targeting the HR and benefits sectors.”
Users of benefits platforms – HR and benefits managers – give employees a benefits budget and set up the “guardrails in terms of where and how the funds can be spent.”
Employees tap their way to much more personalized and relevant benefits. The solution offers innovative features, such as:
- Employer-branded debit cards, both virtual and physical
- Contactless payments via mobile wallets
- Custom spend rules for managers to implement usage policies
- Real-time transaction control and visibility
Given the employer and employee value unlocked by integrating financial features into HR apps, the report anticipates that the spendable benefits cards solution is “unlikely to stay entirely within the pure ‘benefits platform’ market.”
The research report outlines potential use cases for spendable benefits cards, such as use in “employee-engagement platforms, reward and recognition platforms, traditional HR platforms and new employee-centric super apps.”
Alex Mifsud, CEO and co-founder of Weavr, commented on the report by noting that benefits have become an “essential tool for employee engagement in the UK and employee expectations have rapidly evolved to match their experience as consumers.” Mifsud added that to meet these expectations, new approaches, powered by “modern retail payments technology, are required.”
Their latest report found that “half of benefit managers are looking for new solutions to tackle low employee benefits adoption, and fintech tools offer a solution that makes a difference.”
Embedded finance is already in the “pipeline for 72% of UK SaaS businesses, and we’ve seen that HR and benefits tech are among the earliest adopters.”
The research within the report, conducted by Censuswide on behalf of Weavr, surveyed 250 benefits managers in organizations “with 50+ employees across the United Kingdom.”
It identified that the two major issues facing benefit managers came from rising business costs “impacting the quality of perks (27%) and more employees working from home (27%), which includes working abroad. 80% of benefit managers reported having some staff who worked outside of the HQ country of the business.”