Employers and employees alike often think that paycards are mainly for those who either can not get or don’t want a bank account. For these ‘unbanked’ employees it certainly is much easier and cost-effective for them to receive their pay on a paycard then by a paper check. But there are many advantages for ‘banked’ employees as well. Some use it as a savings tool, while others use a card to stay within a budget. To get to know all the advantages, however, you have to try it.TRY IT, YOU’LL LIKE ITWhen I was an employee at H&R Block we were encouraged to get some or all of our pay put on a paycard regardless of our banking situation. This experience was invaluable because we offered our clients the option of getting their tax refunds on a similar card. Before long we knew the best practices and each of us had our own personal experiences of how we used the card that we could share with our clients, leading to a very high acceptance rate among our clientele. I don’t think we would have seen all these advantages without actually using the cards ourselves. So if you are thinking about offering paycards I strongly suggest having any staff member that may have the responsibility of offering them to employees, try them out beforehand.BUDGETING TOOLI used my card only for meals I would have at work. I knew how much money I wanted to spend, so I only had that amount of money diverted to my pay card each pay period. It kept me within my budget and was easy to track. Many pay card companies offer cardholders tools like online access and text message alerts so they are always aware of how much money remains on their card.SAVINGS TOOLEmployees can divert an allotted amount of their paycheck to a paycard, making it easy to save funds for future vacations, holiday gift shopping, or other “fun money” purposes.AVOIDING FEESNone of these advantages make sense if your employee is charged a fee for using his/her card. The most common mistake is using an ATM to extract cash from the card. Instead, make a purchase at a grocery store and select the ‘get cash back’ option.READY TO LEARN MORE?Besides employee benefits, there are numerous advantages for employers who offer paycards as well, mainly the saved cost and convenience of not issuing, mailing and replacing lost paper checks. If you’d like to learn more go to our paycard page here: http://psnw.us/services/paycards.html and click the link at the top/left to get started.