Atomic Teams With Jack Henry for Direct Deposit Solution

Payroll company Atomic’s direct deposit tool is now accessible through Jack Henry’s digital banking platform.

“Access to Jack Henry’s API, design, and authenticated frameworks has enabled Atomic to directly integrate into the digital banking platform, providing a seamless banking experience,” the companies said in a Thursday (Dec. 1) news release.

The companies say Atomic leveraged the Digital Toolkit, the same set of application programming interfaces (APIs) on which the Banno digital platform is built. Banno is Jack Henry’s digital platform.

Atomic held a soft launch for its Deposit plugin on the Jack Henry platform in June, according to the release. Deposit lets financial institutions offer customers the chance to digitally set up and switch direct deposits to fund accounts at their banks.

“This collaboration is a great example of conjoined fintech that creates stronger wins and greater opportunities for financial institutions of all sizes, fostering a more competitive landscape,” the companies said.

PYMNTS spoke to Lindsay Davis, head of markets for Atomic, about the need for innovation in the payroll space.

In many cases, a consumer either logs in to their payroll system and manually keys in their bank account and routing number. This process could also involve things like adding sub-accounts or working with a financial institution (FI), which could mean the FI giving them a physical form or digital PDF with instructions to supply that to their HR department.

“So today, it is really disjointed and disconnected, [and] the experience [is] highly prone to drop-off; you’re maybe going to do it and maybe do it later,” Davis told PYMNTS. “But what Atomic does is it embeds [the payroll onboarding experience] within the financial application, either desktop or mobile.”

She said consumers that use Atomic can set up direct deposit by using the company’s search feature, which lets users connect their payroll provider directly to their bank account without needing to leave the app.

“You log in using your user password and that’s it,” said Davis. “We’re pulling the data that you asked Atomic to pull in, so you don’t have to do anything else. You don’t have to physically download anything, you don’t have to send [your information] anywhere and you don’t have to key in anything. And it can happen in as little as one pay cycle.”