Papaya Global, a leading automated payroll and workforce management platform, participated in the Visa Everywhere Initiative – Women’s Global Edition as the champion of the European region.

This year’s competition, held in Paris this month, was open to companies founded by women. Papaya, based in Israel, was co-founded by noted HR and payroll expert Eynat Guez, who serves as the company’s CEO.

Papaya won the European competition earlier this year. The final featured six regional representatives in the Fintech Challenge and six in the Social Impact Challenge. Nearly 1,300 companies from 107 countries competed for those final 12 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 today is as manual and low-tech today as the transportation industry was just 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.”

SOURCE Papaya Global