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Senate committee hears competing views on earned‑wage access; advocates press for fee caps, tip limits and real‑time tracking to prevent advance stacking
Summary
Opponents and interested parties urged stronger consumer protections for earned‑wage access (EWA) services during testimony on Senate Bill 117, recommending fee caps, default gratuity set to zero, classification of EWA as credit in some cases, and a centralized tracking system to prevent consumers from taking multiple advances across providers.
Witnesses testifying in opposition and as interested parties told the Senate Financial Institutions, Insurance and Technology Committee that Senate Bill 117 needs stronger guardrails for earned‑wage access (EWA) products, particularly for direct‑to‑consumer services that are not employer‑integrated.
“Almost half of the consumers in that dataset were stacking these loan product or stacking these advances,” Monica Burks, policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending, told the committee, citing the group’s analysis of about 214,000 EWA transactions. Burks said her organization found that a minority of frequent users generate the majority of advances and that transaction fees and tips can trap low‑income workers in repeat usage.
Burks and other witnesses described three industry models before the committee: employer‑integrated…
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