5 Best Lifestyle Spending Account Vendors

The news about lifestyle spending accounts is out. New research reports that only 7% of employers currently offer LSAs as part of their benefits offering. But 38% are planning or considering offering LSAs by 2025. 

If you’re ready to level up your employee benefits package, a lifestyle spending account empowers your employees to enjoy meaningful perks personalized to their unique experiences. But which lifestyle spending account (LSA) vendor should you choose? Our guide offers five suggestions and provides tips to ensure you’re making the right investment. 

Top 5 LSA vendors in 2024

Kickstart your research by comparing and contrasting the following LSA vendors to see which aligns best with your employees’ needs: 

Benepass

Benepass is a people-first benefits administration platform offering a wide range of pre- and post-tax employee benefits and perks. Using card-based technology, employers can fund a lifestyle spending account with a set amount, and employees can use their Benepass Visa card in a variety of ways, including gym memberships, wellness expenses, meal subscriptions, childcare, and many other options. 

Benepass achieves an impressive 4.8 out of 5 rating from the G2 user community—here’s why: 

Ease of use

The Benepass dashboard provides an overview of all the information your employees need at a glance, such as their contributions, expirations, card transactions, and expenses. From here, navigate to the Explore page which offers a list of vendors where employees can spend their funds. 

Don’t take our word for it. Here’s a sample collection of five recent reviews, all reporting that Benepass is sleek and smooth to use: 

• “Benepass is extremely easy to use, and their customer service is excellent.”
• “The interface is very good. Easy to add account information.”
• “I love how easy it is to view, manage, and use my company benefits all in one place and from anywhere I go.”
• “The interface is very simple and easy to understand. All transactions are well-tracked and can be gathered with the click of a button.”
• “The layout is clear and concise, not too busy where it would be hard to find something.”

Categories 

Benepass allows employers to decide what qualifies under their lifestyle spending account. Eligible pillars can include health and wellness activities, food, mental well-being, professional development, and more.

Here are some examples of how employees with different lifestyles enjoy their Benepass lifestyle spending account: 

• Daphne, aged 35, from Paris, France, uses her LSA to pay for a Talkspace subscription. She meets with a therapist once a week. 
• Joe, aged 25, from Chicago, uses Benepass to pay for his Equinox membership. He takes fitness classes twice a week and meets with a personal trainer. 
• Jackie, aged 32, from Austin, uses her LSA to subsidize her son’s daycare. 

Integrations

Benepass integrates with a range of HRIS and payroll systems to reduce manual data entry and ensure employee record accuracy between multiple systems in your HR tech stack. 

The Benepass admin dashboard displays all the data received from an integrated system, which is valuable during account setup and employee onboarding to ensure everything is streamlined. 

Employee coverage

Benepass is built as an inclusive platform to support employees, regardless of their location. The Benepass Visa card works anywhere that Visa is accepted, with no extra currency or conversion fees charged by Benepass if employees want to use their card abroad. 

With enterprise-grade security and bank-level encryption, global employees can access their Benepass account from any country without worrying about their confidential data. 

Customer success

Benepass supports 100k employees from top global companies, spread across a range of industries. Here are just a handful of success stories reported by Benepass customers:  

• Crunchbase reached a 95% employee engagement rate, offering user-friendly benefits 
• Crisis Text Line built an equitable benefits program
• Wix provided equitable food perks to its workforce 
• Jamf hit a 98% engagement rate with its work from home perks program 
• Talkspace built a modern wellness program 

JOON

Joon is a lifestyle spending account provider that enables employees to personalize their experiences. For example, they might use their employer-funded account to pay for subscriptions to Talkspace, Coursera, Calm, and Peloton or for essential home office equipment such as standing desks. 

Pricing: Joon’s pricing starts from $250/mo for unlimited eligible categories, a dedicated account manager, and live chat support. 

Pros and cons: Joon provides access to a wide range of categories you don’t see from every LSA vendor, including gems like advocacy, experiences, and charity donations. The platform also has a neat way of connecting employees’ personal bank cards to Joon for immediate reimbursement approvals. 

Unfortunately, from a budget perspective, you will need to upgrade for extra features like HRIS/SSO integrations and international coverage, which are included as standard from other providers. 

WEX

WEX is a global commerce platform offering various payment processing solutions, including benefits administration. The platform provides a central location for administrators to view and update participant accounts, access reports, and upload relevant files. End users have access to one online account, a mobile app, and a benefits card. 

Pricing: Accurate pricing is available from the vendor on request. 

Pros and cons: WEX offers a rich variety of integration options with 350+ payroll, HRIS, and benefits partners, plus 225+ insurance carriers. Unfortunately, the platform doesn’t achieve a high overall rating from the G2 user community, scoring just 3.6 out of 5. Users commonly report issues with claims approvals and a poor customer support experience. 

Fringe

Fringe is a well-being marketplace that gives employees access to 130+ lifestyle benefit vendors. Using rollout kits and templates, Fringe customers set relevant business goals they want their benefits to achieve. Fringe recommends programs such as stipends, subsidies, and rewards that support companies in meeting these goals. Once launched, employees access the Fringe Marketplace and select benefits that mean the most to them. 

Pricing: Accurate pricing is available from the vendor on request. 

Pros and cons: Fringe is a popular platform that scores 4.6 out of 5 from the G2 user community (0.2 lower than Benepass.) However, some of the reviews are lackluster, mentioning problems redeeming points, lack of choice, and not having enough points to obtain anything meaningful. 

Espresa

Espresa was born after its founders went to dinner and discussed Google’s incredible employee experience programs. The platform offers a lifestyle spending account, and an LSA Plus account, which combines the LSA with community, recognition, and well-being features. 

Pricing: Accurate pricing is available from the vendor on request.

Pros and cons: Espresa offers a wide range of eligible spending categories and an integrated marketplace with zero markups. It’s also suitable for a globally distributed workforce, being available in all languages, time zones, and currencies. Espresa is a robust platform, but users rate it lower than some other LSA vendors on our list. For example, Espresa achieves an overall score of 4.3 out of 5 from the G2 user community, which is 0.5 lower than Benepass. 

How to choose the best lifestyle spending account vendor

Whether you opt for one of the LSA vendors on this list or have another company in mind, it’s wise to do your research before you invest in a package. Here’s what you should be looking for: 

Ease of use

Your LSA platform of choice must be easy to navigate both from an end-user and administrative perspective. A steep learning curve can significantly impact adoption of your technology; staff members don’t have the time to plunge extra hours into training on a new system. And if users don’t easily understand how to access their LSA, they may not participate in your benefits program at all. 

Luckily, ease of use is easy to evaluate by: 

• Checking each vendor’s “Ease of Use” category score with the G2 community 
• Filtering user reviews by “Ease of Use” to see what customers like you have mentioned in their write-ups 
• Taking a free trial or watching a product demo to understand how intuitive the platform really is 

Breadth of categories 

A lifestyle spending account has plenty of scope for your employees to spend their non-salaried funds on lifestyle choices that best suit their needs. For example, working parents may use their LSA for childcare, while employees who are feeling burned out might prefer some mental health support. 

But some vendors offer more categories than others, making it vital that you understand what’s available before you sign on the dotted line. It’s always worth collecting employee feedback to determine what they’d like to spend their funds on. As a guide, our Benepass Benefits Benchmarking Guide reported the following top spending categories: 

• Fitness
• Mental Well-being
• Nutrition 
• Spa 
• Home Services 
• Professional Development 
• Parental Support 
• Travel 
• Food 
• WFH
• Pet Care 
• Charitable Giving 

Integrations

Connecting your benefits administration platform to other tools in your tech stack can extend its value. These integrations allow a smooth data flow from one system to the next, reducing the risk of human error, and saving heaps of data input time. 

Before you commit to a specific vendor, check that their LSA platform integrates with the following: 

• HRIS systems to access employee records 
• Payroll systems to automate benefits program enrollment 
• Single sign-on tools so users don’t have to remember separate passwords 

Employee coverage

A lifestyle spending account is inclusive at its core. Rather than prescribing one-size-fits-all benefits to your worker population, it gives each individual the opportunity to select lifestyle benefits that reflect their unique situation. 

But how does this work for employees who are spread far and wide? Whether you need benefits for a global team or people working in branches across state lines, you’ll want to ensure your LSA caters to every employee, regardless of their location. 

Multi-country benefits can seem complicated, which is why it’s important to select an LSA vendor capable of supporting your employees wherever they’re based and whatever their local currency. 

Customer success

There’s no better indicator that an LSA vendor could be the right fit than learning they’re already supporting other customers just like you. Check out customer success stories on the vendor’s website, or read honest reviews on software community websites to explore their real-life experience. Take note of: 

• The goals they’ve achieved with their LSA, for example, improved engagement or retention rates 
• Whether customer support is easy to access 
• If benefits administrators enjoy the system; for example, has the LSA platform saved them time? Do they use the reporting and analytics features? 

Don’t be afraid to reach out to customers directly for more information and an honest appraisal. 

Choose Benepass as your lifestyle spending account vendor

Benepass is a top-rated LSA provider, loved by notable companies like Talkspace, Muck Rack, Coda, and Mindbody. Our platform offers a versatile, user-friendly experience that will skyrocket participation in your benefits programs and achieve stunning engagement and retention results for your organization. And it’s easy to set up, too. 

1. You’ll choose your LSA’s eligible expenses; for example, wellness, childcare, food, mental health, or professional development. 
2. We’ll code your unique benefits policy into the Benepass platform and issue your Benepass Visa cards. 
3. We’ll connect to your payroll to automate enrollment for your employees. 
4. You’ll communicate your benefits offering to your employees and invite them to join Benepass. 

Ready to see our lifestyle spending account in action? Book a free Benepass demo today.