If you’re searching for a pay card for employees, you may notice there are a lot of options on the market. A longstanding option has been the rapid! pay card issued by Green Dot Bank. 

While both Branch and rapid! offer a fast, digital pay solution for employees, there are key differences between our solutions. Most notably, the Branch Card is a debit card for employees, while rapid! is a traditional pay card. Read on to discover our differences and similarities so you can choose the best option for your business.

Key Differences Between Branch & Rapid

Searching for a pay card for employees and trying to decide between rapid! and Branch? 

1. Debit card vs. traditional pay card

While rapid! offers a pay card for employees, Branch offers a debit card for employees. What’s the difference, you might ask? 

A pay card, also known as a payroll card, is similar to a debit card but has one key difference: it’s not linked to a bank account. Instead, a pay card uses a separate account, usually provided by a third party, to hold prepaid wages. This allows employees to access their wages without needing a bank account. 

While this sounds like an easy solution, traditional pay cards may leave some of your workers—such as unbanked workers or minors—without access to financial services that could help their day-to-day lives.

Branch is a debit card for employees that can also be used to push wages to workers plus it comes with a digital banking experience to support more of your workforce—even unbanked workers, workers with limited documentation, and minors 14+.  This can be especially crucial in creating a banking history for workers that don’t previously have one. A banking history is often needed to obtain loans, mortgages, or other financial services. 

2. Pre-funding for disbursements

If you’re searching for a pay card, you’ll need to learn about the not-so-fun element of pre-funding. Essentially, pre-funding requires companies to tie up capital in a separate account in order to fund advances. Rapid! is one of the many pay card solutions that requires a pre-funded account when issuing instant payments or disbursements to employees for things like payroll corrections or one-off payments.

Branch, however, does not require pre-funding for these type of payments. We front the money to your workers for their payments, meaning you do not need to tie up capital in a separate account.

3. Fee Structure

Offering a new financial service to your workers is great, but if it comes with excessive fees, it may do more harm than good.

While rapid! charges different fees such as monthly maintenance fees, ATM fees, and transaction fees for taking earned wage access advances, Branch does not charge monthly maintenance fees or transaction fees for advances and offers eight free in-network ATM transactions per month. 

Plus, Branch users can always receive funds to their Branch account for free, where they can save or spend their money as they wish.

Similarities Between Branch & Rapid

1. Earned wage access

In addition to offering direct deposit of regular wages onto either pay cards or debit cards for employees, both Branch and rapid! offer earned wage access options. Earned wage access is a feature where your employees can request an advance of a portion of their wages ahead of payday if needed, to cover emergency expenses or other unexpected needs.

While this feature isn’t required, many businesses like to offer EWA to their employees as it’s an in-demand benefit that employees want. Just make sure that the EWA you’re offering doesn’t come with hidden fees for you or your workforce. 

While Branch allows your employees to take advances fee-free, rapid! charges $1.00 per transaction with a cap of $6.00 per month.

2. Cashback rewards

Choosing a pay card provider that can offer additional financial wellness perks to your workforce is always a smart choice. Both the rapid! Pay card and Branch Card offer cashback rewards on everyday purchases. 

In addition, Branch offers a savings goal feature, personalized spending insights, and financial literacy content to help workers gain secure financial footing.  On the Branch app workers can also access Greenhouse, a curated marketplace to browse additional financial products and services—such as personal loans or refinancing options—powered by MoneyLion. 

3. Different payment types allowed

Both the rapid! pay card and the Branch Card allow companies to issue wages, tips/mileage reimbursements, and other types of payments to worker’s cards. This provides flexibility for the one-off payments that naturally come up for workers as well, such as stipends, bonuses, and even last-day pay or final paychecks.

Both cards also come with instant or personalized options, allowing you to start paying more people on Day 1 while providing the flexibility of a personalized upgrade down the line.

Finding the Best Pay Card for Employees 

Whether you go with a pay card like rapid! or a debit card for employees like Branch that comes with free digital banking, it’s important to determine what your business and your workforce needs from a payments solution in the first place. By carefully weighing your options, you can determine what makes sense for your business and the people who power it. 

Learn more about the Branch Card.