Papaya Global’s reputation as a leader in global payroll continues to grow. Earlier this month, Papaya took part in the Visa Everywhere Initiative – Women’s Global Edition as the champion of the European region.
The Visa Everywhere Initiative is an annual competition. This year, for the first time, the competition was devoted to the theme of women entrepreneurs. Only companies founded by women were allowed to participate.
Papaya was co-founded by noted HR and payroll expert Eynat Guez, who serves as the company’s CEO. Nearly 1,300 companies from 107 countries competed for one of 12 spots in the final – six in the Fintech Challenge and six in the Social Impact Challenge.
Papaya won the European competition earlier this year to take one of the coveted finals spots. The overall winner of each challenge received a $100,000 cash prize and mentorship directly from Visa.
“We are thrilled that Visa recognized Papaya’s ability to facilitate payments at a high level and wanted learn more about our payment process,” said Maayan Karstaedt, Product Expert at Papaya Global, who represented the company at the competition in Paris. “The world of payments is changing quickly, and Papaya is perfectly positioned to facilitate payments of all kinds and at all levels.”
In addition to pitching Visa on Papaya’s services, the event included networking with other finalists and a trip to the Visa sponsored Woman’s World Cup taking place in Paris.
Ms. Karstaedt said Papaya is helping solve the problem of scale encountered by many companies looking to build an international workforce.
“They can find the talent. That’s never been easier, with 40% of today’s workforce working remotely and distributed globally,” she said. “But employing and paying them- that’s the problem they are facing and we are solving – by dragging payroll – kicking and screaming! – to automation and greater efficiency.”
Ms. Karstaedt noted that it is already possible to see the first signs of the future of payments – workers will be able to access their earnings on a daily basis rather than have to wait for payday at the end of the month or even every two weeks. But while technology is creating new opportunities, the field of payroll overall is still lagging well behind, resisting changes that could make payroll cheaper, faster, and free of errors.
“Global workforce management today is as manual and low-tech as the transportation industry was before the Uber revolution,” she said. “We are at the cusp of a monumental change. And Papaya is already there, making payroll smarter, simpler, and more secure than ever.”
