PayNow is a unique feature in the PaySauce mobile app that lets employees access the money they’ve already earned, effectively letting them choose their own payday on demand.
Kiwis who are short on cash often resort to high-cost, predatory lenders. PayNow gives employees a better option. It is not a loan, so there are no borrowing fees or interest, and there’s no danger of creating more debt. PayNow is funded by BNZ as part of their mission to disrupt predatory lending in New Zealand.
PayNow involves sending money to an employee directly, so it is only available on PaySauce plans that include automatic payment transfers (Standard or Premium).
About PayNow for employers
There are no costs to employers or employees to use PayNow.
The funds are supplied to the employee by a special fund kindly funded by BNZ. It is repaid to that fund on their next payday with a deduction that is automatically loaded.
The funds that are sent to the employee are not coming from your company bank account.
PayNow is available to your employees as long as you are using PaySauce to automatically pay your employees (i.e. you aren’t paying them yourself via internet banking).
Its available no matter who you bank with, as the funds are supplied by the BNZ fund.
PayNow requests are processed automatically if your employee is on a standard payment type such as a salary or a fixed number of hours.
If your employee timesheets their hours, you will receive a notification to approve the request. This is so the number of hours the employee has said they have worked so far is validated. The PayNow request doesn’t ‘lock in’ any timesheet hours into their pay run - it is purely for the purposes of calculating the payment.
The deduction from the employee’s pay to repay the BNZ fund will appear in your payroll reporting as a payment to a BNZ account. You don’t need to do anything to manage these, it is all taken care of for you.
PayNow can be turned off either at an employee level (to make it available or unavailable for individual employees) or at a company level (enabled or turned off for all employees in your company).
About PayNow for employees
You won’t be charged any fees or interest for using PayNow. It isn’t a loan, it’s a portion of your net wage that you have already earned.
You need to be 18 years or older to use PayNow.
You need to go through an identity verification process and answer three questions about how you use PayNow. You need to have a NZ Drivers license or NZ Passport to complete the verification process.
You won’t be able to use PayNow until you have been paid at least once from your employer’s payroll.
There’s no overall limit to the amount of times you can use PayNow, however you can only have one open pending payment at any time and you need to have already earned enough funds. You can only make one PayNow request per day.
We can only process PayNow on a normal business day. Requests are permitted Monday – Friday between 6am and 9pm. PayNow transactions are not processed on public holidays.
Once your request is submitted, it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to appear in your account. In some cases it might be processed overnight and you’ll see the payment the next day.
You can get up to 80% of the amount earned since your last pay, minus any deductions like PAYE, KiwiSaver, child support etc. So, for example, let’s say you’re on a fortnightly pay, working 5 days/week and you earn $1,500 each pay after taxes and deductions. After 4 working days, you’d have access to a maximum of $480 of wages.
Eligibility criteria
You can review an employee’s eligibility to use PayNow by going to the PayNow area in employee settings.
Go to ‘Employees’ on the left hand side menu.
Click on the employee’s name, then select the ‘Settings’ tab.
Select PayNow from the menu in the middle of your screen.
Enabling or disabling PayNow
If you want to turn off PayNow for an employee, go to the PayNow area on the Settings tab for the employee and change the PayNow option to ‘no’, then save.
If you want to turn PayNow off or on across your company (for all employees):
Go to your company settings by clicking on your company name in the top left hand corner of your screen.
Click on the Settings tab.
Select PayNow from the menu in the middle of your screen and switch the option to off/on as required.