How To Pay The Millennial Workforce

Demand for instant and peer-to-peer (P2P) payments is heating up, and financial institutions (FIs) are seeking to cater to that need, knowing that if they don’t, their customers are likely to turn elsewhere. This month’s Faster Payments Tracker™ explores the latest developments, as FIs and other companies seek to provide or tap into accelerated payment services.

Around the Faster Payments World

Early Warning Service’s Zelle appears to be taking off in the U.S. Over the past two years, demand for mobile and digital P2P payments has risen notably (to the point that many FIs now consider such services a must-have), said Fiserv’s Jeff McCrory, director of product marketing. At present, about 5,100 FIs offer Zelle.

Similarly, in Europe, EBA Clearing’s RT1 system for real-time consumer and business payments appears to be taking off. The company announced new uptake by German payment service providers (PSPs), bringing its reach to a total of 1,700 such entities in the country, with more slated to join in coming months.

However, the reported success of RT1 in Germany doesn’t mean these kinds of faster payment systems are taking off everywhere. The European Commission, for example, is expressing concerns over the lukewarm reception toward its TARGET instant payment settlement (TIPS) system. With other payment offerings already prevalent in the market (such as those offered by PayPal, Tencent, Google, Amazon, Alibaba and Facebook), consumers and corporations aren’t flocking to TIPS as expected, prompting the European Commission to muse over a potential regulatory measure to encourage uptake.

Find these and the rest of the latest headlines in the Tracker.

Deep Dive: How RTP Has Changed the Bill Payments Game

In the U.S., it’s not just P2P seeing a rise in demand for instant payments. Faster payment services are being leveraged to make bill payments speedier and easier to manage. After all, slow bill payments can present a host of challenges. In some cases, clients who send utilities payments may have their services temporarily cut off if the money is slow to reach the companies.

This Tracker’s Deep Dive explores how The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payments system is being tapped for bill payments to provide faster processing, better data visibility and increased security.

Read the full Deep Dive in the Tracker.

Instant and Mobile Payroll to Fight Employee Turnover

Employees living paycheck to paycheck may struggle to pay an unusually high utility bill or an unexpected emergency expense if they have to wait a week or more to receive earnings for the work they’ve done. That’s a problem that instant payroll apps are seeking to address. For a fee, these mobile solutions enable employees to access money they’ve earned on the spot.

Such services are also becoming more important to employers seeking to appeal to a workforce that is increasingly comprised of millennials and Gen Z, who have grown to expect instant and mobile access to everything, according to Jason Lee, CEO and founder of instant payroll solutions provider DailyPay.

In this month’s feature story, Lee explained how these instant payment apps are fast becoming table stakes for recruiting and retaining employees — millennial and Gen Z workers in particular.

Find the full story in the Tracker.

About the Tracker

The PYMNTS Faster Payments Tracker™, powered by Fiserv, is the go-to resource for staying up to date on faster payment developments and initiatives on a month-by-month basis. The Tracker highlights the contributions of different stakeholders, including institutions and technology providers coming together to make this happen.