If it's the 16th that's 4 business days. But I agree, going through all the trouble of switching payment processors because you hope if the bank they're using fails they'll get back up and running in less than 4 days is a horrible ROI.
Most payroll process have relations with multiple banks. They have emergency credit revolvers in place. They are resilient to single point of failure. Rippling has shown it not.
The bank died with payroll in flight. If they had alternates it would have been faster, but like Monday or Tuesday. 1-2 days instead of 4.
No payroll processor could have made payroll on time in this situation. If you overnight a letter from SF to NYC and the plane crashes on landing, the replacement letter is definitely going to be late.
Well, everyone supposedly has a plan until they get punched in the nose. I'm skeptical that any payroll provider would be fully resilient to their primary bank failing. They'd need to have a 100% reserve in a secondary account and have instant failover logic in place to update payment flows for all customers. Doesn't sound likely.