By Adedapo Adesanya
Global human resources company, Deel, has announced the acquisition of African-based payroll and HR solution company, PaySpace, for an undisclosed amount, in one of its largest acquisitions to date.
By acquiring PaySpace, Deel will become the first global payroll and Employer of Record (EOR) with its full-stack payroll engine localized in 50 countries and integrated into its offering.
PaySpace’s proprietary technology is a cloud-native framework built as a single engine. Its platform allows for easy configuration to add additional countries through localization. These localization projects normally take years to complete, but with PaySpace’s innovative technology, it can localize much faster than any other payroll provider.
PaySpace has more than 20 years of payroll technology experience, providing payroll engines and HR services in 44 countries across Europe, Latam, Middle East and Africa for more than 14,000 customers. Its size, expertise, and proprietary disruptive payroll technology give it unrivalled scale and reach. Customers include multinationals across various industries such as Heineken, Coca-Cola Beverages and Puma Sports SA.
These clients will now become part of the acquisition, thereby allowing for greater efficiency and control for companies, faster payroll cycles, more localized compliance insights relevant to their workforce, plus the ability to make changes to their payroll at any time.
This is Deel’s latest acquisition after buying APAC payroll provider, PayGroup. This latest move makes Deel the owner of the full HR stack- entities, local teams (legal, HR, payroll), and local payroll engines – across six continents.
This is part of its four-year ambition to serve 100 countries with native payroll engines.
Speaking on the deal and development, Deel’s co-founder and CEO, Mr Alex Bouaziz said, “Global payroll is hard to do and critical to get right. As a company, you want assurances you can pay your teams on time, compliantly, anywhere in the world.
“PaySpace’s single-platform payroll expertise and breadth of coverage, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, combined with PayGroup’s presence in APAC, will give Deel customers the reach they need to grow their businesses globally. Our long-term vision is to be the most comprehensive payroll system in the world.”
On his part, Mr Clyde van Wyk, PaySpace Director explained that like PaySpace, Deel strives to evolve its offering through disruption.
“We set out to modernize the payroll industry, which was burdened by manual processes and stringent legislative and compliance requirements, much like Deel revolutionized global hiring.
“This acquisition brings together leading employment services and payroll technology expertise, delivering a unique and powerful customer offering with unrivalled automation, flexibility and scalability.”
Deel also announced that it has achieved over $500 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) organically, outside of this acquisition. In under five years, the company has grown to 3,000 team members in more than 100 countries. It has been EBITDA positive and consistently generating cash for a year and a half.
Deel now owns 150+ entities in the world and now manages in-house in-country payroll teams in over 70 countries, in addition to offering Employer of Record, contractor, immigration, HRIS, and performance management services worldwide.
Business Post Contributor 
Dipo Olowookere