Workpay lands Visa as investor in $5M round
Image Credits: Workpay
Tage Kene-Okafor | 2:10 AM PDT • August 22, 2024
Businesses across Africa face challenges managing payroll, especially in a landscape with different regulations, remote employees, and hybrid workplaces. About 80% of small and medium-sized businesses still use Excel and Google Sheets, as they can’t afford or maintain complex payroll systems.
Here’s why: On-site third-party solutions offer limited features, while software designed for large companies can be expensive and difficult to use. Global companies like Rippling and Gusto have made payroll easier for international businesses, but they struggle to work well in Africa.
That’s where local-based solutions such as YC-backed Workpay come in and thrive.
Workpay provides cloud-based HR, payroll, and benefits solutions for businesses with employees across Africa, serving two main customer types. First, for local businesses with 20-100 employees operating within a single jurisdiction, like a manufacturer in Nigeria or a grocery shop in Kenya, Workpay provides HR and payroll solutions to manage their workforce. Then, for businesses with 100 to 1,000 cross-border employees, such as a company in Uganda hiring in South Africa, Workpay also helps ensure employee compliance across different markets.
On a call with TechCrunch, co-founder and CEO Paul Kimani says that small- to medium-sized businesses prefer more comprehensive, full-stack solutions instead of juggling multiple systems, both for simplicity and cost: Using separate solutions for the same department means they spend more, as they have to pay for each piece of software individually.
Workpay has adjusted accordingly over the years. Initially, the 5-year-old startup focused on payroll but has since expanded its offerings, responding to customer feedback as it scaled.
Features such as time and attendance tracking are used mainly by businesses in manufacturing, where monitoring employee hours is essential. Conversely, remote work businesses are less interested in tracking physical presence — they want to measure employee performance, which Workpay’s performance management feature addresses.
