Digital banking company DCI has teamed with Atomic to offer consumers easier direct deposit access through their banks.
The partnership announced in a Monday (Feb. 13) news release, will let DCI customers tap into account funding streams without having to build in-house integrations or invest in new technological infrastructure.
“This will enable community banks to offer their account holders a quick, convenient way to setup and switch direct deposits, enable early access to earned wages, and seamlessly verify a user’s income and employment status,” the release said.
According to the release, Atomic’s deposit solution lets DCI customers digitize direct deposit setup and switch processes. Atomic’s Verify API and Earn solutions will be available to customers later this year.
“Verify API allows community banks to verify income and employment,” the release said, while Earn “enables bank customers to unlock paycheck liquidity by tapping earned (but unpaid) wages ahead of their employers’ pay cycles, similarly to Earned Wage Access (EWA) products.”
As PYMNTS noted last month, EWA, also known as on-demand pay, has existed for nearly a decade but has surged in popularity over the past few years. It offers employees daily pay for their work rather than the traditional biweekly or bimonthly pay period, helping ensure workers’ compensation is available right away rather than forcing workers to wait.
One recent survey found that 81% of households earning more than $100,000 per year want EWA, while 78% of people overall said free EWA would improve their loyalty to their employer, and 79% said it would make them feel more valued as workers.
PYMNTS spoke with Atomic’s head of markets Lindsay Davis last year about why the payroll space was ripe for innovation.
She described a “disjointed and disconnected” setup in which a consumer either logs in to their payroll system and manually enters their bank account and routing number or needs to physically share information with their financial institution.
The experience, Davis said, is “highly prone to drop-off; you’re maybe going to do it and maybe do it later. But what Atomic does is it embeds [the payroll onboarding experience] within the financial application, either desktop or mobile.”
The report noted that Atomic’s solution is part of a push for more digital-first experiences in the financial services industry. Davis said much of this trend is driven by the need to revamp financial solutions and products to conform to younger consumers’ expectations.
“In response to this trend, we enabled the account opening and onboarding process to go more smoothly,” she told PYMNTS.
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