Alice Card Setup FAQ
Please use this step by step visual guide here. It walks you through the process, screen by screen, from start to finish.
May another member of my team complete the Company Details questionnaire?
Yes. It may be completed by you or another leader in your company. You can invite someone else to help complete it from the homepage of your Alice Admin Dashboard.
Why do I need to provide business information to Stripe?
Regulations require banks and financial services companies know who their customers are, known as "Know Your Customer". Stripe Payments company, our financial services, along with our bank partners for Alice Card, requires your company to have at least one company representative's information on file. The company representatives may be you, your director, your c-level executive, your CEO, head of finance, head of HR, or similar. The representative must be a legal US resident with a valid social security number.
Once this step is completed, Alice Card can be issued to your employees. This is not specific to Alice, all pretax benefit providers issue pretax benefit cards and must ask their customers to complete this compliance questionnaire.
Click ‘Start Stripe setup’ on your Alice Admin Dashboard, to start the compliance process.
What is a Payroll Bank Account, and why do I need to connect it?
Your company's Payroll Bank Account is the checking account from which you pay employee payroll each pay period.
When your employees make contributions to Alice Card from their pretax wages, that money remains in your payroll bank account when payroll runs. Alice sweeps these employee contributions from your payroll bank account to your company’s Alice Card funding account at Stripe so they can spend on parking and transit with Alice Card.
These transfers are not our fees, and the funds do not belong to Alice, they belong to your company's commuter benefit plan.
Click the orange "Enter account and routing number" button in the Alice Admin Dashboard for each location. You can securely connect your account by either entering the account and routing number or by logging into your bank account via Stripe.
What should I send my finance team about whitelisting Alice's ACH IDs
Please let your finance team know that Alice will be making regular transfers and ask them to confirm that they've whitelisted our ACH IDs:
• 4270465600
• 1800948598
• 0000004670
You can read more about whitelisting ACH IDs here.
My company has many locations or pay groups and we use a separate payroll bank account for each—may I connect multiple payroll bank accounts?
Yes! Each location on your Alice Admin Dashboard has an orange button to add account and routing numbers for that locations' payroll bank account.
My company has many locations or pay groups and we use the same payroll bank account for some of them—may I connect one payroll bank account to several pay groups?
Yes! If you have many pay groups using the same account, you can connect the same account to multiple pay groups. Use the orange button to add account and routing numbers for that location and choose the account number you entered.
Once I complete these steps, what happens?
For each employee who requested Alice Card, Alice will transfer their estimated transit or parking expenses for one week to your company's Alice Card funding account. This opens the card account for each employee. When the employee ends employement, this amount is returned to your company. You can see your Alice Card funding balance on your monthly accounting report.
Each pay period Alice will transfer the amount that employees contribute from thier pretax wages into the Alice Card funding account so that employees may spend on parking and transit using thier Alice Cards.
Is my company paying for my employees' parking or transit?
No. The source of these funds are your employees' pretax contributions. When payroll runs, employees' contributions are left behind in your payroll bank account by your payroll provider. After payroll runs, your pretax benefit providers (that’s us) transfer pretax contributions into your company's pretax benefit account. This works just like any pretax benefit account, including a 401(k).
How often will these transfers take place?
Alice Card transfers will take place weekly. Your first transfer amount is what we estimate to be your employees' first weeks' Alice Card transactions.
Are these funds being used to pay Alice's fees?
No. This steps enables Alice to transfer the amounts your employees are spending on Alice Card. Alice's fees are billed separately. You can access your invoices on your dashboard.
What happens if my employees do not spend these amounts?
Transfers to your Company's Alice Card account will be used to fund Alice Cards of all of your enrolled employees. When your employees terminate, any remaining funds are returned to you. You can access your company's Alice Card funding balance in your monthly accounting report.
Why Alice Card: With Alice, there are two ways for employees to spend their pretax earnings on parking and transit—using their own credit or debit cards and using Alice Card. Many employees enjoy using their own cards—it’s easy and they can earn points and miles; however, there are lots of situations where requiring connecting their own card limits access to your employees:
Employee is cash dominant, no bank account, no credit history: many employees—especially back of house employees, recent immigrants, and others—are cash dominant, may not have their own bank accounts, or don't have the credit history for their own credit card.
Prepaid cards are expensive: The alternative to debit and credit cards is prepaid cards. Many charge fees for adding money and each time you spend money (such as this popular prepaid card you can buy at a CVS that charges $4.95 to add money and $1.50 each time employees spend money).
Employees are "data cautious", or can't connect: Some employees don't want to give their social security number to a bank to get their own credit or debit cards. Some employees have their own cards but may not feel comfortable sharing their data with us. Others might be using a small bank or credit union that doesn't support connect-your-card technology.
For all these reasons—to provide access to benefits to as many employees as possible across FOH and BOH—we launched Alice Card in 2021.
