What's the benefit of a pay card system, and why would my company be switching to them exclusively?

This was a new one to me, so I did a bit of research on paycards, which have evolved as an easy and secure way to pay employees that have no checking account. For this type of employee, the paycard seems to be a good solution, as they will likely either pay their bills in cash or buy from institutions that will accept the card like a debit card.

For an employee with a checking account, this would be an inconvenience since there would be no way to get the net amount of the payroll into the employee's checking account for purposes of allowing the employee to pay bills by check or pay credit card bills. I fail to understand why such an employee would find a paycard to be an advantage and in fact would cause a lot of problems with ordinary bill paying.

Provided that the employer was also able to direct deposit into a checking or savings account, there would be no obvious problem with some portion of the payment being made by card. But I fail to see why an employer would require payment solely by payment card and I would advise protesting to the employer. You should also consider calling your state office that enforces payroll and work hour issues to see if such an exclusive program is legal in your state.