Dive Brief:

• Gopuff has launched Instant Cash Out for its U.S delivery workers, which allows them to receive their earnings balance at any time. The offering is enabled by Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform.
• Gopuff’s instant pay option continues a series of investments made by the company to improve its delivery partner experience and retain workers in a tight labor market, including the launch of its Gopuff Driver app, driver promotions and more.
• The latest enhancement to worker benefits comes after a tumultuous past few months for Gopuff, in which it eliminated hundreds of positions during two rounds of layoffs between April and July.

Dive Insight:

Gopuff is one of the first instant commerce businesses to offer an instant pay option, the company said in a press release. Other delivery firms that offer the perk include Grubhub, which launched the feature in June, while DoorDash offers a version of it as well.

“Now more than ever, delivery partners are looking for convenience and speed when accessing their earnings,” said Daniel Folkman, senior vice president of business at Gopuff, noting that workers can access their pay “within minutes, rather than days.”

Gopuff is partnering with Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, and partners like Visa Direct, Visa’s real-time money movement network, for the initiative. Instant Cash Out should give delivery workers a more flexible, faster way to receive earnings and tips, Gopuff said in a press release. 

This continues a series of investments by Gopuff to keep workers engaged with the company and entice new hires to join. This year, Gopuff launched the Gopuff Driver app — which streamlines the delivery experience — and redesigned the “earnings” tab in the app to make earnings information more transparent. Gopuff also partnered with retail technology company Upside to offer delivery partners promotions at more than 50,000 businesses, including cash back opportunities at gas stations, restaurants and grocery stores.

Gopuff has also quadrupled the size of its delivery partner support team in the past 12 months, and has launched perks such as vehicle maintenance discounts, credit and discount opportunities on tax services, and expense and mileage tracking.

But Gopuff’s investments in its delivery workforce have been overshadowed by a tumultuous past few months, in which the company experienced two rounds of layoffs between April and July. Both layoffs — which eliminated 3% and 10% of Gopuff’s workforce, respectively — were part of an internal “realignment” aimed at improving the company’s financial performance, as well as to “remove overhead and drive operational efficiencies,” the company said last month. At the time of the second layoff, Gopuff also said it will close 76 dark stores across the U.S. — equating to about 12% of its U.S. footprint.