When events like the NCAA Final Four come to town, they bring an influx of short-term workers who keep everything running—but often for just four or five days. Despite the brief duration of this work, many organizations still rely on traditional payroll systems to compensate them, creating unnecessary friction where speed and simplicity matter most.

In industries that have relied heavily on cash tipping, such as hospitality, prepaid cards can be just as game changing. Instead of asking for a valet driver’s Venmo, a diner could scan a QR code and send a tip directly to the driver’s prepaid account.

While event staffing and tipping are two clear examples, the potential extends much further. In a recent PaymentsJournal podcast, Ben Osmond, SVP of Treasury and Payment Solutions at U.S. Bank, and Jordan Hirschfield, Director of Prepaid at Javelin Strategy & Research, explored the impact of prepaid solutions across sectors such as the gig economy and contract work.

As cash and checks continue to decline, prepaid products can reshape the work experience for contract and seasonal workers, while also delivering benefits for employers.

Filling the Tip Card

As tip jars have gone increasingly cashless, restaurants have sought more efficient ways to distribute tips digitally.

“What they are doing is using prepaid programs to provide tips at the end of shift,” Osmond said. “There’s some interconnectivity with the point-of-sale systems where we’re able to calculate the tips that a server is going to receive so that they can have those loaded onto a prepaid card at end of shift. Often, they will have them on their card and in their account before they jump in their car or jump on the bus to head home.”

This model is often well received, in part due to consumers’ familiarity with gift cards and the stored-value accounts like those offered by Starbucks or Target. That said, some workers may still hesitate to accept tips through what they perceive as a gift card format.

“Sometimes people don’t understand that you still get a regular paycheck maybe from your hourly work, and that a card that you get for your tip outs is a payroll card,” Hirschfield said. “Some of that is just the messaging and the idea around it, where they don’t think of it as payroll but as their tip card, that’s what it’s there for and that’s the intent.”

“It’s a payment option; it doesn’t mean it’s the one thing they will get,” he said. “When you go home at the end of the day, you’ve got that tip money in your hands in the same way you would have in a cash environment. These products support the whole idea that there’s multiple ways to pay people, just like they’re always have been. It used to be you would get your check for your hourly work and your cash for your tip outs. Now, we’re moving to a digital environment for that.”

Winning or Losing Talent

Beyond tipping, digital prepaid cards can dramatically improve the work experience for contract and seasonal workers across industries.

“Instant issuance changes the game when you think about those contractors, those seasonal workers and short-term employees whose entire employment experience might come down to five days of working at an event,” Hirschfield said. “When they finish on the day it closes, pay them out and their entire experience is complete. They’ve worked their hours; they’ve received their payment, and everyone has a clean break.”

This streamlined approach creates a win-win: payers benefit from simplified coordination, while workers receive fast, secure, and flexible compensation.

As short-cycle payments become more common—whether for summer jobs, event staffing, or project-based work—prepaid cards are well positioned to meet this important need.

“More employers are starting to realize the value because today’s workforce is mixed,” Osmond said. “There are gig employees, contractors, and temps, and a lot of the legacy payroll systems struggle with high turnover and rapid onboarding of employees. Ultimately, a pay experience can win or lose talent in a tight labor market. It’s very important that employees are being paid the way that they want to be paid.”

Real-Time Earnings Access

Just as important as how workers are paid is when they are paid. In a digital payments landscape, where consumers can receive near real-time transfers via apps like Zelle, the answer is increasingly immediate.

“One of the most relevant trends today is earned wage access, the ability for an employee to receive wages for hours that they have already worked but have not yet received a paycheck for,” Osmond said. “With that Friday or every other Friday payday, they’re able to access these funds early and request a portion of their wages which can be sent to them electronically onto a prepaid card, plastic or digital.”

Regardless of how payments are delivered, workers expect digital access to their financial information. This makes it critical to offer a robust app that provides full visibility into balances, transactions, and spending. This is especially important for contract and short-term workers, many of whom juggle multiple jobs and remain constrained by traditional pay cycles.

“Having these options where you can get paid either with earned wage access on an early basis or a couple days early, those are critically important to the people receiving that money—especially when they may need to spend that money as soon as they earn it to fit their lifestyle.” Hirschfield said. “Also, you get people who are potentially underbanked and unbanked, and this can also fill that gap.”

From the Employer’s Perspective

While the benefits for workers are substantial, employers also stand to gain. Paying via prepaid can reduce onboarding time and administrative costs, enabling workers to get started more quickly.

“It can cut costs around eliminating checks or email reissuing of checks, things of that nature,” Osmond said. “It can reduce fraud. That’s something that often doesn’t get talked about from an employer’s perspective, but there is fraud on paychecks. They’re also having less calls and less concerns into their HR or their payroll department with questions about their checks.”

“You can lower the cost of ownership scale of all of these things,” he said. “We work with a lot of quick-service restaurants that have many different locations that are using our prepaid products. By having one product and one disbursement method, they’re able to be much more efficient than they would by delivering checks to each different location.”

Immediate payouts can also play a valuable role during employee separations. Whether voluntary or involuntary, issuing final wages via prepaid card can help defuse what is often a sensitive and time-critical situation.

And these scenarios are only part of the broader opportunity for prepaid solutions within the full-time workforce.

“You look at other things where it might be an off-cycle payment, where it could be a bonus or sales incentive program,” Hirschfield said. “These things are done off cycle; they’re instantly done. You hit an incentive bonus on sales, you’re paid instantly, and you feel rewarded. These are all examples that play into why having programs like this help.”

A Frontline Experience

Taken together, these developments position prepaid cards as a valuable part of modern work experience—and signal the potential for disruption within the broader payroll space.

“As we think about this as a whole, payroll and wages aren’t just a back-office function anymore, it’s a frontline experience,” Osmond said. “Payroll cards and wage cards have moved beyond check replacement to become a digital infrastructure for the workforce that today is mobile, it’s mixed, and it’s often outside of traditional banking.”

“The next standard is simple, it’s a quick onboarding process,’ he said. “We need to pay people fast, we need to pay them consistently and we need to do it with controls in place that employers can stand behind. What these products do, it helps make a real bank-issued program that can support earned wage access as well as tip functions—without changing the payroll cycle as a whole for the employers.”