Mattress Firm Needed On-Demand Pay for Hourly and Commission Workforce

Mattress Firm runs a commission model unlike most retailers. For years, one problem sat unsolved: earned commissions were real, calculated, and completely inaccessible until payday. Here's how Tapcheck fixed it.

Key Metrics

• 7,200 employees served with earned wage access
• 76% of users transfer at least once per month
• $9.6mm in total transfers funded

Testimonial

"With our employees, income can swing week to week. We needed to offer earlier access to earnings without overhauling payroll."

Mark Whiting
VP Total Rewards, Mattress Firm

On-Demand Pay That Works for All

Mattress Firm needed help to build a custom solution for their bifurcated workforce. But other providers told them it couldn't be done. Until Tapcheck.

Company

Name: Mattress Firm

Locations

Number of Locations: 2,300

Industry

Type: Retail

Employees

Count: 7,200

Payroll

System: Workday®

Real Money, Sitting There, Unreachable

As anyone who's stepped into a mattress showroom knows, the buying experience is unique and tailored to individual taste. It requires testing comfortability, price, size, even financing — all of which are configurable to the customer's needs. To best serve their customers, Mattress Firm employs many salespeople who work the floor, goaled on getting everyone into the right mattress for them.

But because of that individuality, the pay periods can be unpredictable. Some months are busier than others. Some customers take their time in choosing a mattress, with the deal only closing (and the commission conferring) when the mattress is delivered to the customer's home. And if commission is earned a week before payday, it's not available yet — even if that sale technically occurred weeks prior. That means that on any given day, earned commissions are sitting in the system: real money, fully calculated, but completely inaccessible until payday.

To solve this problem, Mattress Firm asked their previous EWA vendor if they could build a solution that allowed both hourly and commission-based employees to access their pay early. But they ran into a wall, hearing from their provider that they couldn't support commission-based pay. Even though the employee need was clear, the team didn't have a partner that would help them solve the issue. So it sat unsolved for four years as employees struggled with other ways to handle the cash flow uncertainty.

Solving what others couldn't

Tapcheck heard from the Mattress Firm team that this problem was real and had stumped their previous EWA provider. But Tapcheck stepped in to solve it. Their solution was to integrate directly with Mattress Firm's commission platform, Verisent, to capture daily finalized transactions and make them available the next morning. It was something that had never been done for this pay model before.

The result: fewer employee requests for off-cycle commissions, and a noticeable shift in employee morale as they moved from anxiety to confidence about their finances. Suddenly that commission money they'd already earned was available the next day, rather than being sequestered until payday. That confidence changed how associates showed up on the floor, worried less about the timing of when the commission of the sale might hit and more about how they could help the customer.

What turnover costs retail today

• 60% Average annual turnover for retail employees
• 46% Improvement in retention for retail employees using Tapcheck
• $1.4mm Estimated turnover cost savings for a 1,000-employee retail company using Tapcheck

Zero Payroll Disruption

A powerful differentiator was also Tapcheck's payroll-native earned wage access model that connected directly with Workday. Since Tapcheck was already a Workday Innovation Partner, the integration was ready to go whenever the Mattress Firm team was. Payroll stayed the same, too -- no new bank accounts for employees, and no new payroll processes for employers. Wages were automatically reconciled on payday, too, so the payroll team really could just watch the benefit work its magic and not worry about manual upkeep.

Today, earned-wage data flows automatically every day, giving 7,200 employees real-time visibility into what they've earned and what's ready to access.

• 9x Increase in platform usage after switching to Tapcheck

Confident Employees, Calmer Floors

When associates can see their finalized commissions every morning, their financial anxiety drops. Financial stress is a primary driver of turnover, and so that shift shows up both on the sales floor and the employee roster. Since Tapcheck eliminated the stream of off-cycle commission requests to HR and payroll teams, it freed everyone to focus on what matters.

Across 2,300 locations, that daily calm compounded into measurable improvements in retention, morale, and floor performance.

See what on-demand pay could do for your team

Tapcheck integrates with your existing payroll and commission systems, costs your business nothing to offer, and gives hourly and commission employees alike a reason to stay.