Payfit, French HR startup, acquires €70M in new funding

PayFit, the French company that digitizes and simplifies payroll and HR management for SMEs, announces a €70 million raise from two European investors, Eurazeo Growth and Bpifrance through its Large Venture fund, and reiterates its ambition to develop a global HR solution for all European SMEs.

With a 70 million euro round, in addition to the 19 million euros previously raised in 2016 and 2017, PayFit is pursuing its ambition to simplify the management of human resources for all SMEs in Europe. This fundraising is being conducted with new French investors, Eurazeo Growth and Bpifrance, and its historical partners, Accel, Frst (formerly Otium Venture) and Xavier Niel, who wanted to renew their support. Three years after its creation, PayFit now serves more than 3,000 SMEs in France, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom, and has 300 employees in its offices in Paris, Barcelona, ​​Berlin and London. This new financing will allow PayFit to continue developing its HR solution. 

"The trajectory of PayFit since its launch and its extraordinary potential for the years to come make it one of the most beautiful start-ups in Europe. We are very proud to associate Eurazeo Growth with this tremendous adventure and we look forward to contributing to the success of PayFit alongside the management team and other shareholders," says Yann du Rusquec, Managing Director of Eurazeo Growth.

Serve all European SMEs 

A YouGov study conducted for PayFit in April 2019 shows that only 44% of European employees 1 say they have already used a digital tool for human resources management in companies. Digitization is underway but is far from over. 

Firmin Zocchetto, CEO and Co-founder of PayFit says: "This is just the beginning of the adventure: Europe brings together tens of millions of SMEs who want to digitize. It's an incredible market, and our ambition is to become the reference in payroll and human resources management for these SMEs."

PayFit's European expansion will continue in 2020 with the opening of offices in Italy. Thanks to the "JetLang", a programming language created by PayFit that makes it easy to adapt the solution to the specific legal requirements of each country, setting up a new market is becoming faster and faster. The Spanish solution was built in eight months, the German in six months and the English in four months. With its experience, PayFit aims to now offer a successful solution to conquer a new market in just three months. 

Zocchetto adds, "This is certainly PayFit's biggest challenge: recruiting the right talent at the right time, without compromising on excellence and shared values. We seek to strengthen all the teams: technical, product, commercial, support, marketing, etc. We are therefore looking for very diverse profiles."

Participate in the professional development of employees 

The solution continues to grow and centralize today's payroll, social statements, absences and holidays, expense reports, the integration of new employees, the directory of employees, etc. Annual interview, talent management and career management modules, and more, will complete the solution. 

By digitizing these time-consuming administrative tasks, PayFit frees up time for employers and employees; it is a major issue to be able to refocus on the essential, that is to say the human and not the administrative. The ambition of PayFit is to participate in the professional development of the employees of each SME and this necessarily involves the digitization of HR. 

Doubling its workforce in 2020 

Already with 300 employees, PayFit plans to double its workforce to 600 employees by the end of 2020 and 1000 by the end of 2021.

"We are very pleased to participate in this important step in the development of PayFit and support the management team in its growth project, in the service of digitalization of SMEs, a mission dear to Bpifrance, whose heart of action aims to stimulate the growth potential of French SMEs," concludes Nicolas Herschtel, Deputy Director of the Bpifrance Large Venture Fund. "We will therefore be fully mobilized to support PayFit in this common ambition."

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