Employers are always looking for new ways to motivate their
employees. Many employers are looking at gift cards as an additional option for
employee incentives. This trend is growing rapidly.
Another trend is the use of prepaid debit cards for payment of
wages to employees. Many employers have used electronic payments (direct
deposit) for years for meeting their payroll needs. Unfortunately many employees
do not have bank accounts and so direct deposit was not a viable method of
payment for all. Now many employers are offering the option of payroll cards.
Prepaid payroll cards create cost savings by reducing lost or stolen check
replacements, bank processing and handling fees, check fraud, and check printing
costs.
As electronic payments takes place on a national scale in
employee reward programs and as a method for delivering wages, we have also seen
electronic payment cards used as a method of payment from various employee
health care accounts.
With the migration towards consumer driven health care and the
effort to make consumers more accountable for their health care choices, we have
seen the introduction of the flexible spending accounts (FSAs), health
reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) and health savings accounts (HSAs). The
benefit to employees of participation in one or more of these flex accounts is
tax savings.
The adoption of electronic payment cards for use with various
consumer driven health care accounts to expedite claims processing has been
proven to show a marked increase in participation by employees. With the
addition of Information Inventory Approval Systems (IIAS) which will reduce the
amount of paper claims required for substantiation of expenses, the use of the
health debit cards is likely to increase. Participant’s appreciate having their
claims paid sooner (at the point-of-sale) rather than later (days or weeks after
the expense was incurred). Increase of participation in consumer driven health
care accounts results in a greater tax savings for employer.
For more information on how DataPath’s electronic payment
cards can benefit you, please contact Sales at sales@dpath.com
