Personal Finance Canada

In most companies, the work week lasts from Sunday to Saturday. With payroll only working during weekdays, the need to manage the data coming from employees (hours worked, absentees, ...) and the need to run the calculations, they needed a few days to get everything in order and checked, so employees would receive their pay on Thursday.

Even now, many companies, especially SMBs, need to collect the data and send it to their accountant before they receive the information on how much employees should be paid. So it gives them a few days to do so.

Having a payday every week or every 2 weeks is simpler from a company perspective, as it makes the number of days even for every pay period, so less calculations to run, while allowing the employees to be paid more often.