Why wait? How technology has disrupted the last things we wait for

Time is precious. Time is money. But surprisingly for far too long, we just accepted the archaic wait times and inconvenience associated with everything from hailing a taxi to ordering food delivery to getting paid. Fortunately, new technologies have emerged that disrupted these staid industries, empowering consumers with the tools and solutions they need to make their lives easier and more productive.

For generations, the only ways to secure a taxi or private car service were time-consuming, inconvenient, and came with considerable personal risks. Whether it was done by phone or by literally waving one down in the street, the taxi industry needed serious innovation. And along came Uber, changing ground transportation as we know it forever.

Launched in 2009, Uber listened to the challenges and frustration people had with the current system. They recognized an archaic system that simply wasn’t meeting the needs of consumers. Leveraging advances in smartphone technology at the time, they revolutionized the taxi industry by creating a safe, convenient, transparent, on-demand ride-sharing service with groundbreaking features such as real-time tracking, cashless payments, and driver ratings, effectively bypassing the need for traditional taxi dispatch systems.

The endless wait for a mysterious hired ride or taxi was a thing of the past. Now a taxi dispatcher is essentially located in the power of your hand. And what sort of impact have they made? As of January 2025, Uber has completed 47 billion trips since its founding—saving riders countless wait-time hours.

Waiting for a scheduled time each week to watch your favorite TV program seems like a relic from a bygone era of black-and-white televisions and silent movies. However, as technology evolved, so did the consumer’s entertainment expectations. There became an expectation that all engaging content must be available on demand, when you want it. And to meet those expectations, the world’s most powerful brands from Netflix to Apple to Amazon created opportunities for the viewer to become their own personal television programmer. You could binge watch a season of your favorite show at any time—and on multiple devices.

Waiting a week or more was simply no longer acceptable. Instead of planning your life around watching your favorite show, you could now watch the show at your convenience. The result? According to Nielsen, Americans streamed 12 trillion minutes of TV last year, which is equivalent to 8.4 billion days or 23 million years. Ordering delivery from restaurants was once a time-consuming, laborious, and tedious process. You had to navigate everything from collecting menus from your favorite eatery to calling in and being put on hold by the overworked restaurant employee. It often felt like such a waste of time. There had to be a better way. And there was.

In 2012, DoorDash helped revolutionize how consumers could enjoy meals from their favorite local restaurants without leaving home. Their technology disrupted the antiquated restaurant-delivery system, empowering people to easily browse a variety of restaurants, place orders and have meals delivered to their door via delivery drivers, known as Dashers—all within seconds from a few taps on a phone. Once again, a tired industry that squeezed valuable time from us was disrupted. A decade later in December 2023, DoorDash reported that it had facilitated 5 billion consumer orders.

Finally, similar to the examples listed above, the archaic way we are paid was disrupted. Think about it, with so many of the aforementioned advances in technology, quite possibly one of the last things we wait for in life is our pay. Waiting two or a few weeks for your pay, even though you already worked hard and earned your money, comes at a cost. More than half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Not surprisingly, nearly half of Americans say they have paid a bill late in the past year. The issue often comes down to something so easily rectified—the misalignment of one’s bills to one’s pay.

The last meaningful innovation in payroll was direct deposit launched 50 years ago. Until a little over a decade ago, when the first On-Demand Pay programs were born, gaining popularity ever since. The advent of this technology empowers workers with choice and control over their earned pay to make the most of every day. By accessing the pay they’ve already earned, hardworking Americans can pay bills, save, or invest on their own schedule, not an arbitrary scheduled payday.

With On-Demand Pay, employers can focus on serving the needs of workers to optimize their daily time, maximize their pay, and create opportunities for financial savings and growth. Businesses should keep an eye out for On-Demand Pay solutions that are easy to implement and won’t impede upon your current payroll process.

For employers, the challenge they face is finding the right On-Demand Pay solution that best suits the needs of their employees. For example, it’s often important that the employee has access to their earned pay at any time, because, of course, bills wait for no one. The On-Demand Pay offering must also easily integrate into a company’s time and attendance system, because the last thing you need is to provide your payroll team with extra work. Finally, seek out an On-Demand Pay provider that offers 24-hour assistance to your employees so your HR/benefits team is not fielding calls about the service.

Time is a precious commodity. And over time, we have created thoughtful and transformative innovations to help us avoid wasting it. As business leaders, we must continue to disrupt industries and make our lives easier, better, and more manageable. And that will certainly be worth the wait.