The numbers are hard to ignore. A record 55% of Americans say their financial situation is getting worse, up from 53% last year and 47% in 2024, marking the fifth consecutive year more Americans say their finances are worsening rather than improving, a trend last seen during the Great Recession. Some 67% of Americans say they live paycheck to paycheck, a lifestyle that spans income brackets, education levels, and professions. And nearly half say they are losing sleep over money worries, according to YNAB’s 2026 Money Mood Report.
For employers, that financial pressure does not stay at the door. PwC’s 2026 Employee Financial Wellness Survey reveals a workforce under sustained pressure, where day-to-day financial strain is undermining productivity, engagement, and long-term workforce stability.
Fifty-nine percent of survey respondents say they are stressed about their finances right now. Nearly half of respondents say their compensation is not keeping up with costs. And the impact reaches directly into the workplace: 76% of employees report that their financial stress has negatively impacted their productivity, and 55% of financially stressed employees say it has distracted them for three or more hours at work dealing with finances.
It is against this backdrop that Andrew Brandman, Chief Operating Officer at DailyPay, argues the conversation around earned wage access has fundamentally shifted, from “should we offer this?” to “how do we do it right?” Checkpoint News recently engaged with Brandman to explore the operational, compliance, and cultural dimensions of EWA in depth.
His perspective was also on display at PayrollOrg’s Congress 2026 in Nashville, where he joined a panel session titled “Modernizing the Pay Experience with DailyPay and Workday” alongside HR tech analyst Pete Tilakos, Cinemark’s Senior Director of Payroll and Workforce Technology, Letha Creamer, and Bridgestone Americas’ Director of Payroll and Shared Services, Barbara Vetula.
The session framed EWA not as a standalone benefit decision but as part of a broader transformation in how payroll functions within organizations, and Brandman’s insights from both conversations form the basis of what follows.
The Pay Cycle Has Not Kept Up With the Workforce
The foundational argument for EWA, as Brandman frames it, is straightforward. Nearly every financial transaction in a worker’s daily life happens in real time. The pay cycle does not.
“Almost everything we do today happens in real-time — how we shop, communicate, and move money — yet the pay cycle is stuck on a system built nearly a century ago,” Brandman said. “It’s a legacy process that hasn’t kept up with a continuously evolving workforce.”
The data reinforces the urgency. Energy costs, which have risen notably this year, are mentioned by 13% of Americans as a top financial concern, up 10 percentage points from last year and the highest since 2008, tying housing costs as the second-biggest concern, according to Gallup’s annual Economy and Personal Finance survey.
The business cost is significant. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report finds that global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, its lowest level since 2020, costing the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity. For Brandman, that figure is not an abstraction. “Financial stress isn’t just a personal issue, it’s a business one,” he said. He argues that employers who reframe pay access as a core element of the employee experience, rather than a payroll feature, are better positioned to address the root cause of that disengagement directly.
Making the Case to the CFO
For payroll and HR leaders building an internal business case for EWA, Brandman advocates framing it as a productivity and retention tool rather than a soft benefit. The argument, he said, has to land with finance leaders in operational terms.
Sixty-one percent of employees say they are stressed about their finances constantly, and half say their stress negatively impacts their productivity at work. Brandman pointed to DailyPay’s own internal survey data showing that 48% of users report being more productive, 50% feel more engaged, and 68% are more likely to stay with their employer because of on-demand pay access.
The turnover numbers strengthen the case further. According to survey data, 78% of leaders said their employees’ financial stress led to higher turnover last year, with workers leaving for higher pay or better financial wellness benefits. The cost of replacing those workers is substantial. Gallup estimates U.S. businesses lose roughly $1 trillion annually to voluntary turnover, with the cost to replace a single employee often ranging from one-half to two times that employee’s annual salary.
“When 68% of users state they are more likely to remain at a job because of DailyPay, EWA stops being a ‘soft benefit’ and becomes a strategic retention tool,” Brandman said. “The bottom-line benefit is clear: by modernizing the pay cycle, the company can significantly lower recruitment and training expenses while driving a more focused and stable workforce.”
A Patchwork Regulatory Landscape
The compliance picture around EWA is one of the most rapidly evolving areas in payroll, and Brandman was direct about the complexity employers face.
As of early 2026, 12 states have adopted EWA-specific laws or regulations, with significant variation in how EWA products are classified, how transparent their pricing and fees must be, and which employee safeguards must be in place. Approximately 15% of the U.S. population lives in states treating EWA as credit, approximately 12% live in states explicitly exempting EWA from lending laws, and approximately 73% live in states with no EWA-specific legislation yet. What is permissible in one state may require additional licensing or disclosure requirements in another, a compliance reality that multi-state employers cannot afford to overlook.
At the federal level, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued an advisory opinion on December 23, 2025, providing meaningful clarity on one dimension of the question. The Bureau determined that employer-offered EWA settled through payroll processes is not considered credit under federal law when it meets specific structural criteria. The constructive receipt question, however, remains live, with direct implications for payroll processing and tax withholding that payroll teams need to understand and account for in program design.
Brandman acknowledged the complexity directly. “The regulatory landscape is constantly shifting, with some states establishing firm frameworks and others still evolving their approach,” he said. His position is that the right response is not to avoid EWA but to ensure the program is built on a foundation of shared ownership and real-time regulatory monitoring. “It is essential to have a partner that monitors these changes in real-time,” he added.
Compliance Requires Cross-Functional Ownership
One of the more pointed observations Brandman made, both in the Checkpoint News interview and during his PayCon26 panel, concerns how EWA compliance tends to be handled internally and where that approach falls short.
“Addressing compliance concerns requires shifting the view of EWA from a simple ‘plugin’ to a core financial operation,” he said. “To avoid gaps, ownership must be shared across Payroll, HR, Benefits, Compliance, and Legal, ensuring the program is woven into the company’s broader strategy rather than sitting in a silo.”
The repayment model chosen also carries compliance implications that vary by state. Three primary models exist in the market: the deduction model, where the employer deducts the advance from the worker’s paycheck and remits repayment to the EWA provider; the payroll intercept model, in which the employer routes the entire paycheck through the EWA provider before distribution to the employee; and the settlement model, where the employer sends the full paycheck to the worker’s bank account with settlement occurring at the employee’s direction. The deduction and payroll intercept models carry risk in states with wage assignment or improper wage deduction statutes, an area where legal review before launch is essential.
For payroll teams specifically, Brandman said the integration question is critical. Technical alignment between the EWA provider and existing payroll systems ensures that internal controls are automated and that payroll data remains accurate throughout the process. Without that integration, the compliance burden falls disproportionately on payroll staff.
Design Principles: Transparency, Choice, and Avoiding the Credit Perception
Brandman was direct about what separates a well-designed EWA program from one that creates risk for both employers and employees.
“Transparency and choice are the foundation of any EWA offering,” he said. “At its heart is full visibility into a paycheck, understanding exactly how much has been earned in real-time.”
On fees, he emphasized that employees need to clearly understand their options, including any no-cost alternatives available to them. He also pointed to supplementary financial wellness resources, including financial coaching, credit monitoring, and savings tools, as components of a responsible EWA design. “Taking this approach defines a new standard for how employees are treated,” he said.
The design guardrails matter for regulatory reasons as well as cultural ones. CFPB data found that 82% of employer-partnered EWA transactions in its sample carried fees, and that with average usage patterns, the illustrative annual percentage rate was 109.5%, a figure that underscores why fee transparency and usage guidance are not optional elements of program design.
Implementation: Getting the Rollout Right
On the operational side, Brandman said friction in EWA implementation typically traces back to three sources: compliance, integration, and employee communication not being aligned from the start.
“A smooth rollout begins by bringing the right stakeholders to the table early, allowing sufficient time for a deep technical integration, and following a clear, structured communication plan for employees,” he said.
Employee education, he noted, is a component that is frequently underestimated. Without a proactive communication plan handled primarily by the EWA provider, HR and payroll teams absorb a disproportionate volume of employee questions that could have been avoided. The goal, Brandman said, is for HR, payroll, and finance leaders to gain more flexibility and control over the pay experience “with absolutely minimal disruption to their current systems.”
EWA and the Broader Payroll Transformation
The PayCon26 session framed EWA as part of a larger shift in how payroll functions within organizations, a theme Brandman returned to throughout his conversation with Checkpoint News. Payroll is evolving from a back-office function into a strategic partner for the enterprise, and EWA sits at the intersection of that evolution.
The employers best positioned to implement EWA effectively, Brandman argued, are those that have already built the internal partnerships between payroll, HR, finance, and legal that make cross-functional compliance ownership possible. For organizations where those relationships are still developing, an EWA rollout can serve as a forcing function for building them.
Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report notes this is the first time global engagement has dropped for two consecutive years, a trend that makes the case for proactive employee experience investment harder to dismiss. For Brandman, EWA is one of the most direct tools available to payroll leaders who want to contribute to reversing it.
“The ultimate goal,” he said, “is for HR, payroll, and finance leaders to gain more flexibility and control over the pay experience.”
5 Key Takeaways
- Employee financial stress is a measurable business problem, not just a personal one
- EWA is a retention and productivity tool, not just a payroll feature
- The regulatory landscape is a patchwork and moving fast
- The constructive receipt question has not been fully resolved
- Implementation friction is predictable and preventable.
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