Why Businesses Are Embracing Digital Payroll

Digital technology and automation have begun to take a larger role in the world of disbursements, and one area primed for innovation is payroll.

Companies have overhauled their payroll methods as consumers demanded financial innovation and remote access to paychecks. Last year marked the first time cloud-based offerings overtook on-premise systems.

And research shows employers plan to keep prioritizing digitization, with more than one-quarter having fast-tracked digital payroll initiatives in the last year, and 62% saying they will likely do so within the next two years.

PYMNTS research found that there are a number of reasons businesses report for optimizing payroll systems:

Reducing regulatory risks (42%)

Outsourcing processes (39%)

Cutting costs (27%)

This modernization and automation could also prove especially useful in fighting fraud, as 27% of the payroll-related data breaches in the past two years stemmed from human error.

Digitization in the Insurance Industry

Payroll isn’t the only space to see growing consumer interest in faster payments and a more streamlined digital experience.

Insurance firms have also stepped up their efforts to modernize their operations. A recent survey of European insurance companies discovered almost 90% have embarked on digital transformation projects designed to improve customer experience.

Many have focused on attracting a mobile or online-first customer base, partly to help customers simplify claims processing and document management.

Forty-two percent of the insurance firms surveyed said they were interested in building out mobile apps, while 34% expressed interest in further developing digital payments capabilities. But this rise in digitization, happening as more firms take their operations online, has exposed a lot of companies to security risks, with 42% of respondents saying increasing reliance on technology left them more vulnerable.

To learn more about these and other related topics, download your copy of The Disbursements Tracker®, a PYMNTS and Ingo Money collaboration.