With the disestablishment of the Disbursing Clerk (DK) rating in 2005, the job of making sure Sailors were paid the right amount and on time fell under the purview of three jobs in the Personnel Specialist rating (PS): Pay Clerk, Pay Supervisor, and Pay Manager.
When the DK rating was established in 1948, personal checking accounts weren’t nearly as commonplace as they are today. Cash was king, and disbursing payrolls twice a month meant toting around quite a bit of greenbacks. Today, cash is still used in the Navy—or at least it’s found in the name of the debit-card system the Navy uses for transactions that would have been handled in cash in the past.
Sailors are now paid by direct deposit into an account they can access using a branded debit card called Navy Cash (there’s a Marine Cash card, too). Navy Cash cards can be used anywhere aboard a ship where purchases can be made—the ship store, vending machines, and so forth. The Navy Cash Cards are issued to Sailors assigned permanently to a ship, as well as to visitors who will be aboard ship temporarily.
One of the more interesting features of Navy Cash is that it can be used at a “cashless ATM.” Rather than dispensing greenbacks, cashless ATMs dispense a “scrip” that’s worth a specified amount of cash—$20, $50, $100, or more. Navy Cash users can then take the scrip to retailers and hand it over as if it were actual cash, receiving change the old-fashioned way, i.e., in traditional cash.
Personnel Specialists are responsible for all aspects of the Navy Cash system, from issuing the cards and operating Navy Cash Point of Sale Devices to changing Personal Identification Numbers and auditing base or ship accounts.
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