Businesses conduct more document and payment processing than ever before. Learn how to ensure your assets and employees are secure and protected.

In an increasingly online and instantaneous world, businesses must digitize their processes to stay ahead of the curve. Considering the critical importance of paying employees, perhaps no process is as ripe for digitization as payroll.

Establishing electronic payment processing for your employees simplifies both your life and theirs, as it allows for faster and more secure payments than physical checks. As such, direct deposit and paycards are quickly replacing traditional methods of payment and can contribute to your company’s financial success.

With a payment processor, you gain the freedom to manage payroll whenever you want. Instead of having to send information to third parties at specific times or hire expensive full-time payroll employees, you can input the information on your own schedule. Just input the wage data at your convenience, and then the system takes care of the rest.

Payment processing systems also give you more accurate results than manual payroll and increase your regulatory compliance. Rather than struggling to keep abreast of all the latest legislation, processing systems incorporate the latest tax code changes automatically.

Conducting your payment processing with a reliable payment processing partner gives your company added protection against increasing cyber threats in society. Small business payment processing can remove substantial headaches for busy small business owners, while medium and large businesses can save considerable funds.

In this article, you’ll learn how partnering with a digital payment processing company is a smart move for businesses of all sizes.

Payment Processing Partner Benefits

The best payment processors include a range of utilities. For example, a top-notch payroll system should include detailed reporting and an easy web admin interface.

Some payroll systems also include features to manage paid leave and workers’ compensation and offer multiple payment choices. The ability to pay some employees by direct deposits and other employees by paycards, for example, can make a payment processing provider far more appealing than more limited alternatives.

Allowing employees to see and download their own data also makes a payroll system more useful. For instance, employees should generally have access to their pay stubs and tax records, preferably with records extending back several years. This decreases the time spent personally assisting employees while giving them more control.

Some payment processing companies can assist you in integrating their tools with your other products. This may involve the use of an application programming interface (API), or perhaps they may already have available connections. This integration makes life much easier, as one can then directly use data from one program in another, instead of laboriously synchronizing them.

NatPay focuses on both services and integration, offering enhanced direct deposit services through a secure system, to ensure risk mitigation. The straightforward web interface lets you send out payments directly to employees’ bank accounts. And in addition the direct deposit function itself, NatPay also includes online pay stubs, employee notifications by email and SMS, and marketing assistance for your organization.

Easier Employee Payments With Direct Deposit

Payroll systems that let you pay wages through direct deposit substantially simplify check delivery come payday. As the term implies, payment is instantaneously transferred, thus mitigating processing times and reducing the need for physical checks. It is also more secure—payroll fraud is far easier with paper than with direct deposit.

With cyberattacks on the rise, we need ever-stricter security measures. NatPay Direct Deposit fully encrypts all communications for security purposes and is safeguarded by three different insurers along with independent auditing. This ensures that you can safely pay your employees without worrying about losses. NatPay also requires two-factor authentication for payments. This technique utilizes an additional precaution, such as e-mail or phone verification, to bolster users’ passwords. Even if attacks do strike, the second factor acts as backup protection.

Direct deposit has become the most common payroll method in the United States, as it is advantageous for both employees and employers. Payments can be sent and received anywhere, and the process itself is far simpler than writing out checks. As such, it’s easier to learn and takes up less of your valuable time.

Employees don’t have to stress over losing paper checks or going to the bank. They can divide their pay into multiple different accounts and cash withdrawals, instead of having to deposit or cash an entire check at once. As another plus, many payment processing tools include features for workers to manage their money better.

If something goes wrong with a check, you may have to reissue it and face bank charges. Employees would also suffer, having to report a lost or stolen check and await the replacement. Direct deposit prevents these problems and allows you to send payments confidently.

As an example of the benefits of direct deposit, look at the case of Avail Professional Services. A small payroll business in Illinois, Avail aimed to offer their clients direct deposit. For the security and reliability that they needed, this firm partnered with NatPay. The national footprint of NatPay also made sure that people living coast-to-coast in different time zones didn’t throw a wrench in the payment process. Thanks to the universality of the direct deposit system and the speediness of payment transfers, NatPay was able to provide Avail with a payroll service that many banks and ACH providers simply cannot match.

Securely Use Paycards for Payroll

Payroll debit cards, also called paycards, also make for an increasingly attractive choice. These work essentially as reloadable prepaid debit cards. Instead of paying employees with a paycheck or direct deposit, paycards provide an instantly usable alternative.

Paycards share many of direct deposit’s advantages. These both represent fast, secure methods to pay employees. However, unlike direct deposit, a paycard does not even require an employee to hold an account at a bank. For the millions of people who do not have bank accounts, paycards can make for a compelling option.

Paycards serve employees’ financial needs as they arise, whether it’s withdrawing cash from ATMs or shopping at retail stores or online. These cards work practically anywhere bank cards do. Moreover, payroll cards have lower fees than banks and include their own online portal for managing funds.

As with direct deposit, paycards protect workers from fraud, theft, and loss. Cards are easy to replace, along with whatever money the individuals had saved on them. These payroll cards function like debit rather than credit cards, so employees won’t rack up debts that destroy their credit scores.

As much as employees like paycards, these cards also assist employers. You spend less time and money depositing to paycards than writing out checks. The fraud protection and other security measures also work for your benefit.

Use a Payment Processing Partner to Avoid Errors and Streamline

Smart payment tools make payroll more efficient and mitigate financial risk by avoiding potentially costly mistakes. The simple act of going paperless itself eliminates many of the common sources of error, like transcribing figures to checks. With NatPay’s e-statement and e-invoicing solutions, you can transmit secure financial information without fear of leakage. This not only works faster than paper, but it also brings information directly to your employees, making miscommunication extremely unlikely.

The automated workflow also reduces the risk of errors. Fewer people conducting manual data entry means fewer occasions for mess-ups. The practice of typing sensitive information by hand has become archaic. Whenever a rote business process takes time and resources, an opportunity for automation arises. For instance, you can auto-manage bonuses or other payroll tasks from start to finish.

In terms of payment processing, NatPay’s Document Processing Solutions automatically handle bill payments, fillable forms, tax and pay statements, and other critical needs. This approach displaces older manual methods prone to error. Furthermore, NatPay systems have security programmed in from the ground up.

Well-known retailer Family Dollar selected NatPay Online Paperless Solutions to decrease costs. They wanted to replace their previous manual process was laborious, slow, and error-prone. Instead of this paper system, NatPay provided Family Dollar with an affordable digital alternative, allowing them to send pay statements and tax statements entirely online. This new payroll process works efficiently and easily, and can securely handle the volume necessary for this large retail presence. Additionally, the paperless solution integrates with Family Dollar’s existing intranet! The firm’s payroll system is entirely paperless now, and the process has become much less expensive.

Using an online payment processor like NatPay gives you the latest tech automatically. Organizations are increasingly relying on cloud platforms for HR, finance, and practically everything else. Consolidate your systems online for greater accuracy.

Take Advantage of Integrated Finance Solutions

When different parts of an organization’s infrastructure don’t interact with each other, this leaves room for failure. For instance, copying information from one program into another can result in wrong data, unsent payments, and non-compliance. An integrated payroll and HR solution thus increase trust in the system.

Precise HR and finance solutions decrease payment errors that frustrate employees. As such, integrating these systems contributes to employee satisfaction and trust. Having fewer errors also makes regulatory compliance more feasible. Integrated services let you manage employee data in a simple system that reaches your entire business network, all through a secure server.

Combining your payroll and HR solutions also reduces manual effort, so data can flow from one system to another uninterrupted. And as a result of your integrated data flows, you then receive more useful analytics reports and insights. Consolidating systems, therefore, makes these tools more potent aids for real-time business decisions.

For larger national or global organizations, these integrated finance solutions become even more key. Businesses of any size, however, can take advantage of these powerful solutions to make their payroll more sound.

As an example, the Butler County school system in Kentucky recently converted to a NatPay-powered document processing system. Their paperless payroll now securely distributes information pertaining to salaries as well as taxes. Employees can log into the system whenever they feel like it and track their financial information. The school administrators had only to proffer the basic data from their payroll program, which NatPay then integrated with secure document processing facilities. The result? A highly efficient, environmentally friendly solution that the schools plan to expand into other areas of administrative business.

Use NatPay Secure Solutions to Mitigate Financial Risks

In the complex modern world, businesses face many unprecedented challenges. Fortunately, we also have numerous innovative techniques to adapt. Having a nationally respected partner on your side can give you the upper hand in managing risk.

To mitigate financial risk for your organization, it makes sense to combine as many of your critical payroll processes as possible. NatPay has developed multi-faceted approaches specifically to manage financial risk, covering your payment and document processing needs.

NatPay is ready to work with you to find a solution to all your digital finance needs. ACH payments, direct deposits, payroll paycards, electronic statements and invoices, process integration—we have a solution for everything. To find out how you can digitize and streamline your payroll, reach out today!