Waiting for payday is a thing of the past with Paytime, a new HR fintech that gives employees access to their pay checks before pay day. Startup Daily sits down with CEO and founder Steven Furman to find out how technology has fuelled the platform’s rapid growth.
Steven came up with the concept of Paytime when he realised that about 50 per cent of Australians are living pay check to pay check.
“If you look at the world in terms of, ‘What can we get in real time?’ Pretty much everything, other than our pay checks,” Steven tells Startup Daily. “So at that point in time, I thought, if we can allow some kind of technology that can plug into payroll and allow the individuals to access it in real time, when and if they need it, we can certainly help with their financial stress. With financial stress being the leading cause of mental health problems, solving that problem can really go a long way.”
Paytime makes it possible for employers to pay staff their earned wages in real time, eliminating the need for a set payday. For employees, this reduces the stress of managing their finances and improves mental health and wellness. For employers, Paytime provides a valuable incentive, increasing employment rates, productivity and staff retention.
And, as Paytime is not a loan and only advances payment for hours already worked, there’s no risk from borrowing. Paytime integrates into payroll systems via an API, and the company earns a small fee for each transaction.
As the pandemic pushed many businesses into a hybrid working model, Paytime was already quipped for a ‘work-from-anywhere’ culture as the business started setting up 18 months ago.
“We sat down from day one and actually said, ‘Look, we’re going to have a remote environment’,” he says. “We have staff in several countries already. So we pretty much set the business up to be in the cloud. We collaborate with a lot of third-party software and we have security as a key focus to our business. And we have collaborations, so our team is talking on Microsoft Teams pretty much all day, every day.”
Steven believes that having these robust, capable systems in place for his PCs, security and technology infrastructure is key to his business’ early – and future – success.
See what Steven has to say below about Paytime’s tech innovation and growth:
With a rapidly changing threat landscape, Furman believes that business owners need a shift in mindset to stay competitive.
“The interesting thing is, obviously corporates are taking longer to make that shift and it’s probably more of a hierarchical decision,” says Steven. “But most businesses are recognising that, with the amount of cyber threats coming out and potential security issues, businesses are moving pretty quickly. And with SaaS software security providers out there, it’s really not an expensive exercise to put into place. It’s just about getting on with it.”
When asked how to stay competitive in today’s ever-changing business landscape, Furman believes that leveraging the latest technology is key: “It doesn’t take long now to set up businesses, set up tech and get up and running. My one piece of advice would be, continuously upgrade your hardware, as well as your software. It’s not expensive anymore to do that.”
To stay on top of the latest threats and rise to the challenge of hybrid work, businesses need modern devices that can keep up. Upgrading to modern PCs with Windows 11 provides the foundation for a zero-trust ready operating system, which is designed to protect data and provide access anywhere, while keeping you protected and productive. Learn more about Windows 11 Security for Business here.
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