How to Offer Earned Wage Access Without Disrupting Payroll

Nearly half of employees say their compensation isn’t keeping up with costs, according to PwC’s 2026 Employee Financial Wellness Survey. These rising costs make it harder for employees to manage their expenses between paychecks. That’s why earned wage access has become an attractive benefit. Earned wage access lets employees receive a portion of the wages they’ve already earned before payday. Among employees who have myFlexPay from OneSource Virtual (OSV), 78% say it’s improved their lives, and 82% feel more in control of their money.

Yet even though many earned wage access solutions promise the same basic outcome, they don’t all work the same way behind the scenes. And for organizations that rely on Workday Payroll, that’s crucial. The wrong model can disrupt the process that payroll teams already trust by adding steps, creating reconciliation issues, or reducing how much control payroll teams have over the process.

Can earned wage access be implemented without disrupting payroll?

Short answer: yes. But just as a mechanic needs to look under the hood before they know what they’re dealing with, employers need to understand how different earned wage access solutions actually work before they can make an informed decision. Some models add extra steps to the payroll process, while others fit more naturally into your existing Workday setup.

Let’s look at three approaches: the intercept model, the withholding/deduction model, and a Workday-native solution.

How does the intercept model affect payroll?

If you’re a football fan, you know the pain of seeing the other team intercept a pass. The intercept model behind some earned wage access solutions may lack the same kind of visual drama, but the stakes are still high.

As the name implies, a vendor using the intercept model is inserting itself into the payroll process. The provider advances the requested wages and then intercepts or modifies the customer’s payroll files or funding instructions before payday. Because this happens after payroll is completed in your system, it can create the potential for timing issues, inconsistencies, or other administrative challenges depending on how and when the interception happens. That can leave payroll teams with less control over the process and more opportunities for errors and manual work.

How does the withholding/deduction model affect payroll?

In this model, the provider advances an employee’s wages and then uses a payroll deduction on payday to recoup the advance. It typically doesn’t involve altering payroll files or funding instructions after the fact. But it can still create extra work for your payroll team. Repayments are calculated outside of Workday and then brought back in as a deduction. It’s a little like keeping a side ledger that still has to match the official books.

When those amounts don’t match up, your team may have to investigate the mismatches, answer employee questions about paycheck deductions, or manage exceptions before payroll can be finalized.

What makes myFlexPay different?

Instead of intercepting payroll files or recovering advances through a deduction calculated outside Workday, myFlexPay uses Workday’s native payment election functionality.

The key difference is that payroll doesn’t have to be reopened or adjusted later to recover an advance. Here, myFlexPay handles the advance as a distribution of net pay that Workday has already calculated, routing the settlement amount according to payment instructions rather than recalculating anything. That helps payroll teams preserve their existing process without adding a deduction or manual reconciliation step.

Want to offer earned wage access without disrupting payroll?

If your business has invested in Workday for payroll, preserving that process should be a top priority. That means finding a solution that protects the calculations happening inside Workday and doesn’t require your team to manage new deductions or make changes after payroll is complete.

myFlexPay meets that standard. As a Workday-native earned wage access solution, it runs post-payroll, after earnings, taxes, and net pay have been calculated.

Talk to an OSV expert about preserving your payroll process with myFlexPay.