Western Growers officials today announced they are partnering with some of the nation's top financial institutions to offer a payroll solution that will help member companies reduce expenses and provide more convenience and flexibility to their employees. These employers can now reduce various expenses associated with issuing paper checks by offering the CashPay(R) Visa(R) payroll card to their employees. And, the benefits to their employees are potentially even greater because CashPay Visa allows them to avoid the fees associated with check-cashing services.

"One of our roles is to provide innovative ways for our members to achieve cost savings," said Tom Nassif, President of Western Growers. "Payroll and the process of cutting and delivering paper checks to employees has been an obvious administrative cost issue for us to tackle. CashPay Visa provides a new option for handling payroll issues for our members that makes sense on many levels. This is just the latest example of the ongoing efforts by the Western Growers to offer solutions that improve life for both farmers and farm workers including laborers, labor brokers, packers, processors, etc. especially if they are unbanked."

The CashPay(R) Visa(R) Payroll card offers numerous advantages to assist their members with payroll operations and expenses according to Nassif. For their employer members, these include expanding direct deposit payroll to employees that may not have regular checking accounts, eliminating the costs associated with paper, printing, distribution and storage of paper checks, narrowing exposure to potential check fraud losses and providing a safe and secure method of payment to employees.

For individual employees of Western Growers' members, the numerous benefits include: the ability to avoid check-cashing fees for those without established banking relationships; immediate access to their funds the morning of payday at ATMs and anywhere Visa debit is accepted; improved security by eliminating the need to carry large cash amounts; reduced exposure to lost or stolen pay checks; an easy enrollment process; and each CashPay account is an individually-owned FDIC-insured deposit account*. In addition to the savings and improved security, employees will also have access to 24/7 customer service via a toll free phone number where they can receive account information or speak to customer service representatives in English or Spanish. While there may be fees associated with CashPay account, they are minimal and the employee is not charged for the direct deposit of pay.

To extend these benefits to their members, Western Growers is partnering with Bank of America and Visa. Bank of America has been offering the CashPay Payroll card since 1998 and began issuing Visa-branded payroll cards in 2002. Since then, the Bank of America CashPay(R) Visa(R) Payroll card has become Visa's most popular payroll card, issuing more than 500,000 cards since 2002. With the Visa capability, these employees are able to access their funds for purchases anywhere Visa debit cards are accepted at millions of locations worldwide.

Western Growers has been a vocal advocate on behalf of their employer members and is offering and endorsing this voluntary program as a way to improve the payroll services of both Western Growers' members and their employees.

Western Growers is an agricultural trade association whose 3,000 members grow, pack and ship 90 percent of the fresh vegetables and nearly 70 percent of the fresh fruit and nuts grown in Arizona and California, about one-half of the nation's fresh produce.