Cash may be one of the oldest forms of monetary value, but it’s by no means the only option for growing brands and enterprises. Today’s B2B relies heavily on digital value to send mass payouts, including many alternatives to cash payouts, facilitating more effective payout systems.
This guide explores the alternatives to cash payouts available for B2B brands worldwide. After explaining the pros and cons of each alternative, we also explore how you can integrate cash alternatives into your existing system. With a system like Runa, you can seamlessly send alternatives to cash payouts without overhauling your existing system.
Alternatives to cash payouts are secondary payment options that do not involve the use of cash. They allow you to transfer value without using cash, credit, or card, and do not require you to bank details to facilitate transfers through bank accounts or ACH transfers.
There are six primary alternatives to cash payouts to explore: loyalty points, subscriptions, gift cards, cryptocurrency, e-wallets, and shares.
Let’s explore what these look like in greater detail.
Loyalty programs are one of the fastest growing forms of digital value in the world. As of 2023, more than nine in ten companies offer a loyalty program to customers, while eight in ten consumers are members of a subscription, membership, or loyalty program.
You can leverage loyalty points to support mass payouts in a number of different ways. As customers accrue points, percentages, and cashback rewards, businesses can develop innovative cashout strategies to convert digital value into physical rewards.
Cash can be a time-consuming and unrewarding gift for loyal customers of your business. Instead, you can pivot to a loyalty system offering:
Instead of submitting cash values to recipients on your network, you can send recurring subscriptions that delight and impress your receivers. Platforms like Runa offer thousands of different subscription types to drive ROI, spike interest, and keep your brand top of mind.
Recurring subscriptions are best used as a cash alternative for:
Traditional cash payouts are stagnant in nature and cannot change value over time. Converting cash payouts into company shares, however, can provide a dynamic and interesting payment type that becomes a gift that keeps on giving.
Shares are payout alternatives with growth potential and a major incentive to recipients on your network. Instead of sending $50 directly to recipient accounts, you can instead convert the cash into fractional shares, so your customers can own a part of the world’s biggest companies.
Company shares also provide:
Gift cards offer a valuable incentive to recipients across your global network. Runa’s fee-free system with a flexible API can help you do more with less, easily streamlining the distribution of cards without needing to send physical cards or codes.
You can use gift cards as an alternative to cash payouts and achieve:
The rise of alternative currencies like crypto have become more and more interesting to growing brands. If you’re tentative about getting started or nervous about what comes next, you can use platforms like Runa to increase payout reach while relying on alternatives to cash payouts.
Since you can fund in fiat currency and disburse in cryptocurrency, you don’t need to worry about handling, holding, or managing crypto yourself. Plus, our fee-free, code-free system can help you foster more loyalty with a new breed of digital consumers.
Additional benefits of using crypto as an alternative to cash include:
Sometimes referred to as e-wallets, digital wallets are virtual storage solutions for multiple kinds of digital value. You can use third-party aggregators to house gift cards, crypto, and even some forms of cash, then send and receive funds at your convenience — no banking information required.
Digital wallets are growing in popularity, and remain one of the most popular methods of mass global disbursements. Research shows more than 60% of the global population will use digital wallets by 2026, meaning organizations may need to pivot quickly to non-cash methods of disbursement.
With e-wallets, businesses can:
Cash payouts are not always the most effective method of paying businesses, merchants, and employees. Alternative methods provide additional flexibility for growing brands, as well as a potentially smoother system depending on payout type.
You may need alternatives to cash payouts if:
Keep in mind, this is not an exhaustive list of use cases for alternatives to cash payouts. If you are a growing organization looking to go global in today’s marketplace, alternatives are a must-have staple for steady, sustainable growth.
There are many benefits available for businesses transitioning to cash alternatives. In addition to reaching international markets and enjoying additional security on each transaction, alternatives to cash payouts offer faster, cheaper transactions with the added benefit of recipient choice.
Let’s look at each of these in greater detail.
Adjusting your payouts system to accommodate modern alternatives can provide instantaneous benefits that continue long into the future. Using available tools can help you develop a more effective plan for the future and remain competitive, flexible, and top of mind for the recipients in your network.
As you look to the future of digital value transfers, you can use alternatives to cash payouts to achieve the following objectives:
A recent study found that more than 42% of respondents feel strongly that there will be an acceleration of cross-border payments, B2B payments, and instant cross-currency payments. Businesses unable to prepare for the coming shift may be left behind, especially as more and more companies build toward the future.
Although the rise of a purely cashless society may be several decades away, more and more organizations are preparing their payout systems to accept alternatives to traditional cash transitions. Research indicates a 42% increase in global cashless payment volumes, a number that will only increase over time.
Approximately 97% of global respondents believe real-time transactions will become a staple of modern brands. This means it’s now essential to update your modern payment matrix with real-time cash alternatives designed to delight recipients. Implementing correctly also allows you to decrease risk and determine a more competitive landscape as you expand into potential markets.
Growing brands cannot afford to reinvent the wheel — and developing a brand-new payments strategy to accommodate alternatives to cash payouts is not always a feasible task. For this reason, businesses need to look for ways to connect their existing payment methods to the digital value infrastructure of the future, including platforms like Runa.
Fortunately, this is not a difficult task.
You can integrate your payments system with Runa in five steps:
With Runa, the full integration and implementation of your payments platform takes approximately one to two weeks. Once you’ve connected your business tech stack and provided onboarding training to employees, you can begin making cashless disbursements to customers wherever they may be situated.
Runa is an award-winning payments platform helping businesses make regular disbursements using alternatives to cash payouts. We’ve been rated as one of the world’s leading payout networks by hundreds of global brands, and remain a pioneer in the digital value space for B2B brands and enterprises.
Our digital value infrastructure makes it easy for brands of all sizes to effortlessly scale their disbursements with unique cash-like payouts for dozens of possible scenarios. From gift cards and cryptocurrency to shares and donations, we provide more than 1,300 payment types to over a billion recipients in 30 countries.
Businesses have used Runa to empower their payments process with dozens of ways to save time, money, and effort:
You can get started with Runa today by signing up for a free account. We never charge setup costs or activation fees — all you need to do is enter a few fields to start exploring our system immediately.
Ready to dig into the possibilities first? We invite you to schedule a personalized demo. We offer multiple ways to integrate your system with Runa and explore alternatives to cash payouts at your leisure.