According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly half of Americans are paid on a biweekly schedule, an outdated routine that was born nearly 80 years ago when the US government needed a way to efficiently collect payroll taxes. That process was automated long ago, but the lagged schedule for getting people paid has remained. It’s not just the US that deals with delayed payment routines either: Countries from Japan to France to Kenya deal with monthly pay cycles, so that workers are often left to budget 30 days’ worth of expenses with one paycheck.
A new generation of companies has forced the world to reckon with those outdated cycles, though. The rise of on-demand work has accelerated the momentum for on-demand worker payments, with global tech powerhouses paying people on a schedule that works best for them. In fact, Upwork partnered with Visa Direct to shorten their payout wait time from 3-to-5 days down to 30 minutes or less using a direct-to-card payout solution¹.