While much of America heads to the beach or a backyard barbecue, payroll administrators are praying they don’t fall prey to the Triple Witching Curse. Luckily, Chime Enterprise’s (NASDAQ:CHYM) PayTV ensures everyone can enjoy their hot dog in peace.
Chime Enterprise’s Jason Lee said this July 4 weekend is unique because three factors that influence payroll all come into play. Friday, July 4, is a bank holiday, which is rare in itself, as most fall on Mondays. July 4 is also a weekly payday. July 5 is a common semi-monthly payday. This is the first such convergence in 11 years. The next one isn’t due for another five.
Those circumstances force payroll administrators to deviate from normal practice. They accelerate payroll practices, possibly by several days. That increases the risk of timing errors, delays and missed direct deposits, which might not be realized for a day or two. It then takes a few days to address, meaning an employee could go without for four or five days until ACH is up and running once more.
That’s a hard pill for the many living paycheck to paycheck.
“It’s a very active week for payroll to be moving around these dates, because they have to change their entire payroll,” Lee said. “Payroll works until it doesn’t, meaning things often get messed up when you have to change something in the process.”
It gets worse. Lee said the nature of payroll is such that when staff finish their end, it’s off to the bank and ACH. Fingers are crossed it works, there’s no heads-up if it doesn’t.
Chime Enterprise solves this with PayTV. Standing for Pay, transparency and visibility, PayTV tells administrators if payroll wasn’t properly processed. If payroll for 99 employees works, but one does not, Chime sends an alert.
“For the time ever, we are reporting back to the employer if they ran payroll correctly,” Lee said. “The way that payroll works today is that the payroll department runs it. They throw it over the wall, and they hope it works, because the bank never tells them. The only way they find out if it didn’t work is if the employees complain.”
“I see the worlds of payroll and banking coming a lot closer together. Earned wage access was the first step. At Chime, we’re ushering this in because we also work with employers through the enterprise division. I think we’re the only one that can do this among banks or banking applications. This is all about bringing these two worlds together.”
Lee said employers remain focused on investing in their employees’ well-being. PayTV is an easy add because it is no-cost. And with more than eight million people using Chime, adoption becomes simpler when the company offering it is a familiar name.
“There are a lot of people at these companies where, if all of a sudden an employer introduces PayTV, people come out of the woodwork and they say they have it on their phone. And it becomes a very, very easy activation for employers to do.”
“Everyone’s under budget constraints, but (PayTV) is one of those rare instances where they can do something great for employees and not come that much out of pocket for it.”