Ascend Payroll has teamed up with Aslan, the 2026 CIPP Software Product of the Year, so our managed payroll clients can now add on-demand pay and a reward and recognition platform to their service.
Pay is usually the biggest cost a business carries, and it’s the thing employees care about most. Our job has always been to get it right, on time, every time. We’ll keep doing that. With Aslan, clients can also hand their people something extra every week.
What Aslan adds to your payroll
Aslan is a card-powered, payroll-integrated employee benefits, recognition and rewards provider. Employees get the Aslan app and card, and you switch it on as part of your Ascend managed service. We handle the payroll side, so there’s very little for your team to do.
Mobile-first reward and recognition, on a card
Legacy recognition systems are clunky. Painful logins put people off, and vouchers are valued by only a few. With Aslan, managers and colleagues can thank people for good work in under 15 seconds through the Aslan app, and replace vouchers with points they can redeem to an Aslan card, accepted wherever Mastercard is globally.
Because Aslan works on spending people already do, they keep using it. Aslan’s own figures show active users open it more than 30 times a month on average.
Financial wellbeing
Aslan offers a range of practical tools that make your employees’ money go further.
Employees earn cashback on everything they spend with the Aslan card, in store, online and abroad. That works like a 1% pay rise, after tax, on everything they spend.
Aslan also gives 2% back on Amazon shopping and discounts up to 20% across a broad range of merchants.
Aslan offers payroll-linked savings earning 5% a year.
Employees get more choice over when they get paid, plus a suite of budgeting tools. With on-demand pay, employees can access pay they’ve already earned before payday, at no cost to them.
Benefits hosting
Use Aslan’s daily engagement to communicate and drive adoption with any of your benefits.
Host all your benefits in the Aslan app and web portal as a ‘one-stop shop’, track employee engagement in real-time, and get better adoption out of all benefits.
Two CIPP award winners, one partnership
The CIPP Awards are the payroll profession judging its own, and every category is hard-fought. Both businesses came away with the top prize in their categories this year.
Ascend went three for three, winning Payroll Service Provider of the Year (up to 20,000 payslips a month), Project of the Year for Service Providers for our Quality Framework, and the CIPP Spotlight Award for our Operations Director, Josh Donner.
Aslan roared off with Software Product of the Year. The judges said Aslan “successfully identifies a genuine market gap between payroll, benefits, reward and financial wellbeing and brings these elements together into a single employee experience.”
So that’s two specialists, each recognised by their own profession for what they do, now working for the same clients.
Why we said yes
Liam Ridgill, Product and Commercial Director at Ascend Payroll, puts anything new through its paces before clients see it.
“We look at a lot of products that promise to do something for employees. Most of them ask people to change how they live to get the value. Aslan doesn’t. It works on the spending people are already doing, which is why it actually gets used.
Payroll is often the highest cost in most businesses and the most personal thing we handle. Being able to add something to it that employees feel every week, at no cost to them, is exactly what we want to be putting in front of our clients.”
Adele Blackham, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Ascend Payroll, led the partnership from our side.
“A partnership only works if both sides are solving the same problem. We spend our days keeping payroll running smoothly for clients, and Aslan spends theirs making pay go further for the people who receive it.
What sold it for me was how little our clients have to do and how much their employees get back. We’ve found a partner who cares about the details as much as we do, and that makes for a good working relationship as well as a good, award-winning product.”
James Gozney, CEO and Founder of Aslan, sees it the same way.
“We’re thrilled to be partnering with fellow CIPP award winner, Ascend Payroll! Payroll teams are trusted with a business’s biggest expense, and employees care hugely about their pay. So how do we deliver the thanks that payroll teams truly deserve? With Aslan’s payroll-integrated benefits available through Ascend, payroll becomes an active source of value for both employees and the business.
Ascend’s expertise in complex payrolls makes them a natural partner for us. Together we can deliver engaging benefits that boost take-home pay, with reward, recognition and financial wellbeing that employees use every week, at absolutely no cost to them. Time for payroll to take the applause!”
Adding Aslan to your service
Aslan is now available to every Ascend-managed payroll client. Have a chat with your Ascend contact, and we’ll talk you through how it works for your workforce and what the setup looks like.
Not with Ascend yet? Get in touch, and we’ll show you what award-winning payroll looks like, with a little extra for your people on top.
