PayFit, a Paris-based software company that aims to simplify payroll and HR management for SMEs, has raised €254m in a Series E funding round announced today (6 January).
The latest funding values PayFit at €1.82bn, making it France’s latest unicorn and the one of the first in Europe in 2022.
Since the pandemic started, companies have been hiring more employees based around the globe with the option to work from home. This has led to new complexities in payroll and HR management that are often hard for small teams to overcome.
PayFit aims to help these companies by automating manual tasks and streamlining payroll and HR systems – with the goal of saving SMEs time and money, allowing them to focus on business growth.
The fresh funding was led by New York-based investment firm General Atlantic with participation from existing investors Eurazeo, Bpifrance and Accel. It will be used to add 400 new employees to the PayFit team over the next year, invest in the development of new products and increase PayFit’s market share in Europe, which is home to around 24m SMEs.
PayFit expansion
Since its founding in 2015, PayFit has bagged more than 6,000 clients and expanded beyond France into Germany, Spain and the UK. It currently has 700 employees based across offices in Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and London.
“PayFit’s expansion beyond France into the UK, Spain and Germany demonstrated further validation of our innovative offering and our capacity to scale up,” said Firmin Zocchetto, co-founder and chief executive of PayFit.
“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,” he added.
In 2020, PayFit’s then vice-president of engineering, Pierre-Alain Bouchard, told SiliconRepublic.com that the “consumerisation” of HR, along with advancements in big data and machine learning, is changing the face of the payroll industry. “As they mature, they give us new sets of tools with which to fine-tune the experiences of our customers,” he said.
Last year, Europe led the world in a global tech unicorn boom, and France was no exception to the trend. Sorare, Ledger, Shift Technology and Vestiaire Collective, among others, all crossed the billion-dollar valuation mark in 2021 to become some of France’s hottest start-ups.
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