PayFit, a Paris-based startup that aims to simplify payroll and HR processes for companies, announced on Thursday that it has raised €254M in a Series E round at a valuation of €1.82B.
The funding round was led by General Atlantic along with existing investors Eurazeo, Bpifrance and Accel Ventures.
The French company says it intends to use the funding to scale its workforce from 700 employees to over 1000 within the next 12 months. The company will also leverage the capital to accelerate product development and grow its market share across Europe.
The latest funding round comes ten months after raising €90M in its Series D round led by Eurazeo Growth, Large Venture, and BPI France. Since then, the company has hired 300 employees and expanded to three major European markets – Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. To date, the company has raised €179M in funding.
Firmin Zocchetto, CEO and co-founder of PayFit, says, “PayFit’s expansion beyond France into the UK, Spain, and Germany demonstrated further validation of our innovative offering and our capacity to scale up. As we look ahead, we plan to use these new funds to deepen our presence in our existing markets, where we have significant growth potential. At PayFit, we are proud to have built a company with strong foundations, where people are happy to work and that can have a real impact on our clients. This Series E funding will allow us to maintain the rapid growth we have achieved since our founding.”
PayFit: What you need to know
Founded by Firmin Zocchetto, Florian Fournier and Ghislain de Fontenay in 2016, PayFit allows small and medium enterprises to easily and quickly pay their employees.
According to the company’s data, there are over 24M SMEs in Europe facing the challenges of changes in remote working and changing HR trends. PayFit aims to help these startups digitalise their entire HR, save time and money, and focus on growth.
The company has developed a Human Resources Information System (HRIS) module that automates time-consuming HR processes, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
PayFit centralises payroll, HMRC submissions, absences and holidays, expense reports, employee onboarding, and employee contact information.
In addition, the company also provides relevant data analysis to identify gender pay gaps in organisations.
To date, PayFit has 6,000+ customers in various fields, including edtech startup Multiverse, insurance company Marshmallow, and leading global Banking-as-a-Service platform Railsbank.
Investor
Based out of New York, General Atlantic is a growth equity firm providing capital and strategic support for growth companies.
Chris Caulkin, managing director and head of technology for EMEA at General Atlantic, says, “PayFit has built an innovative and disruptive product supporting the payroll and HR management needs of SMBs across Europe. We see great opportunities ahead for the company as it extends its product offering and continues to capture market share in France and across Europe. We are delighted to support PayFit and its management team in this next chapter of growth.”
Accel is a global venture capital firm that has backed numerous companies over the past 35+ years.
Philippe Botteri, partner at Accel adds: “It’s been fantastic to see Firmin, Florian, and Ghislain scale the team from just 40 employees and 60 customers back in 2017 when we led their Series A to a team of more than 700 employees, operating across four European countries and supporting more than 6,000 customers, Payfit’s unique and flexible cloud architecture has enabled it to quickly address the core HR and payroll needs of the large underserved European SMB market and I can’t wait to see what the team will achieve with this new financing.”
