Webinar recording: Earned Wage Access explained – Rethinking wage access in the digital economy

Описание: As digital wage payments expand across developing economies, Earned Wage Access (EWA) is emerging as a solution to workers’ financial liquidity needs. EWA allows employees to access a portion of wages they have already earned before payday, typically through employer partnerships with fintech or HR platforms integrated into payroll systems.

For employers, EWA can improve workforce wellbeing and retention, but it also presents operational, legal, and reputational challenges. For workers, EWA has the potential to reduce reliance on high-cost loans and ease financial stress, but it also raises concerns around fee transparency, data protection, overuse, and wage erosion. Regulatory oversight remains limited, with many countries treating EWA as a financial product rather than also a labour issue, leaving key protections unaddressed.

To advance this important debate, the ILO’s Global Centre on Digital Wages for Decent Work hosted the webinar series “A new solution to an old problem? Advancing wages in the fintech era,” which explored these issues in depth and foster dialogue among key stakeholders in two webinars:

• Webinar 1: EWA explained – Rethinking wage access in the digital economy
• Webinar 2: Wage advances – A new frontier for fintech regulation?