From Payroll to Pay Now: How Real-Time Earnings Are Rewriting Work

Watch more: The New Workforce Economy

The nature of work, and of getting paid, is changing. The familiar two-week pay cycle is giving way to a real-time labor economy where people get paid when they earn, sometimes several times a day. PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster said we’re witnessing the rise of the transactional worker who lives in an on-demand world where payouts are the new paychecks.

Joint research by PYMNTS and Ingo Payments shows that 1 in 3 millennials now rely on gig or tip income as their primary source of earnings, while nearly half of Gen Z consumers earn core income from selling products or services online. Those numbers, said Ingo CEO Drew Edwards as part of the series titled “The New Workforce Economy,” redefine what “employment” means.

“The moment they get their money after today’s job is the pivotal moment,” he told Webster.

The Instant-Pay Expectation

The traditional pay cycle no longer fits the realities of modern financial life. “Getting paid in real time isn’t a nice-to-have,” Webster said. “It’s the difference between filling your tank or paying your rent on time.”

According to PYMNTS Intelligence data, the use of instant payments for income has surged from 15% in 2020 to about 45% in May 2025. Forty-one percent of workers now receive funds instantly most of the time.

Edwards said this shift is about necessity and control, not hardship. “It’s not because they’re poor,” he said. “It’s because they’re managing a business — their personal business — and doing real-time financial management.”

Workers now align their income directly with their obligations. “They’ll say, ‘I’m working today to pay my rent,’” Edwards said, or to earn funds to pay for someone’s birthday gift. “They can tell you what job relates to what bill. That’s empowering.”

The emotional impact of immediacy is just as important. “Payday still triggers that dopamine,” Edwards added. Now it happens whenever one wants, and not twice a month. That sense of control and immediacy is important.

The Rise of the Transactional Worker

This workforce isn’t unstable, said Edwards, and indeed there’s a measure of strength in not waiting for someone in a corporate office to decide whether they still have a job.

He pointed to his son-in-law, a freelancer who once worked for large firms but now manages multiple clients. “He has unlimited gigs,” Edwards said. He never worries about being laid off — only about how to line up the next week’s work.

That flexibility creates new expectations: workers now assume that the payout — their paycheck — should arrive instantly. And many are willing to pay for it.

Paying for Speed and Building the Ecosystem

PYMNTS and Ingo research shows that 60% of those who rely on gig or tip income as their main paycheck are willing to pay a fee for instant access — four times higher than those who use gig income as a side hustle.

The model is not without its critics. “Every time you bring up charging someone for money they’ve earned, people call it predatory,” Edwards said. “But pay for speed has always been part of the economy. You can have it tomorrow for free, or right now for a small fee — that’s choice, not coercion.”

He compared it to ATMs or expedited bill payments. We’ve always paid for speed, he said, and as long as the fees are fair and disclosed, it’s a good thing.

Behind the scenes, that choice is enabled by increasingly connected payment systems. “We don’t just have one account anymore,” Edwards said. “We have a wallet full of accounts — one for saving, one for investing, one for spending. The same is true for transactional workers.”

That fragmentation is giving rise to what Edwards calls “transactional ecosystems.” FinTechs like Ingo and forward-thinking banks are building infrastructure, integrating instant rails, ledgers and compliance tools, that allow workers to choose where and how fast they get paid.

This benefits banks too, Webster and Edwards agreed, because it builds deposits, loyalty and relationships around speed.

Still, Edwards said the industry is only at the beginning. “We’re in the second inning of this process,” he said. The magic will come as we turn that daily payout into the center of a new financial ecosystem — one built around the worker’s “dopamine moment” of getting paid.