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Halyk has launched “Online Advance”: employees of connected companies can get up to 50% of their salary before payday (inbusiness.kz). They apply through the bank’s app. Employees pay no interest or fees; the employer covers the transfer costs.
What happened
The service is available to employees of companies that are part of Halyk’s payroll program and have separately switched on the online advance. A Halyk payroll card alone is not enough. The amount you can get depends on your own salary.
The service lets you take part of money you’ve already earned. The employee picks “Online Advance” in the Halyk app, enters an amount and sends a request. According to the bank, the system processes it automatically, and the money reaches the card within a few minutes.
No paper application is needed, and no separate sign-off from the accounting department for each transaction. Like other operations in the Halyk app, the advance request is sent from a smartphone.
What it means
Here’s the catch: it depends on the employer. The company has to set up the service first, and only then can employees request money. For a person, it’s a way to get part of their earnings when expenses show up before the usual payday.
“Sometimes you need the money today, and payday is still a few days away,” said Kiril Bachvarov, Deputy Chairman of the Management Board at Halyk. He added that the service also takes some of the load off accounting.
What the employer needs
Private companies in Halyk’s payroll program can connect the online advance. They need a bank account, registration in Onlinebank and the 1C accounting software. The employer pays the fee for transferring the advance from the company account to the employee.
Bank clients were the first to try the service, during a pilot. One of them was the Shipager medical center. Its director, Asylbek Torybayev, said employees had a lot of questions at first and were wary of the new thing.
“Those who refused at the start asked us themselves to add them to the list of recipients,” Torybayev said. He added that employees were also told the service would work every month.