Driving growth with spend control at Payflow

Founded by Avinash Sukhwani and Benoît Menardo in February 2020, Payflow's mission is to bring financial well-being to workers in order to support talent satisfaction and retention. It offers three solutions: Payflow, which gives immediate access to salary already earned; Learnflow, which provides financial education; and, Saveflow, which facilitates saving.

Life before Payhawk

Before working with Payhawk, Payflow's expense management was complicated and chaotic. They were focused on their own priorities and creating a product that supported employees and businesses. They were using several providers, including Qonto, and a traditional bank. “We were managing but we didn't have a provider that would allow us to centralise all expenses,” Co-founder, Benoît Menardo explains.

In their old process, employees had to share company cards, which prevented proper tracking of expenses and massively slowed down processes. And when paying in any currency apart from euros (with traditional bank cards), the costs skyrocketed due to exchange rates and other fees. Menardo and the team knew they needed better exchange rates, greater visibility, and control.

Corporate Visa card fans

The Payflow team initially switched to us for a cashback offer. “We changed for the cashback, but we stayed for the product,” confesses Menardo.

Once the team started using the software, especially the company cards, they became Payhawk converts quickly. “The product convinced us because it’s robust, works brilliantly, and is easy to implement.”

Today everyone at Payflow uses Payhawk company cards to pay for their corporate expenses. “People love having their Payhawk card and using Apple Pay and Google Pay,” Menardo mentions, highlighting Payhawk’s popular digital wallet feature.

“I haven’t seen my physical card, because I pay for everything with my mobile. And I don't want to see it either! I just want it to work and be able to do it instantly. And Payhawk gives me everything I need."

Simplification of processes and auto-receipt reconciliation

For Payflow, one of the main advantages of our solution has been process simplification. The first step was the optimisation or, rather, the complete elimination of the manual collection and reconciliation of receipts. Thanks to our optical character recognition (OCR) system, each employee only has to pay with their Payhawk card, take a photo of the receipt with their mobile and the application will automatically capture all the relevant data for reconciliation.

“Now we just take a photo of the receipt, link it to the Payhawk card charge and forget about it. We throw everything away!” Menardo explains. “If the invoice amount isn’t what the bank charged you, it tells you automatically. You save a lot of time, because the platform tells you everything.” Our invoice reading software is approved by the tax authorities, so our customers can go paperless, confident that they comply with the regulations.

Control and visibility to optimise budgets
Payflow loves the visibility and controls our solution gives them over their payments. With real-time visibility, they have more insights to plan successfully, control, and optimise their budgets.

"I really like being able to give each department a card and set the budget," Menardo says. "I like how it works because it gives me control over different departments' expenses. I can tell that the Marketing team has X, the Sales one has Y, and the Operations one has Z. I use the solution a lot for spend control and to plan better from one month to the next."

Integrations and support to grow

As a quickly scaling startup, Payflow needs a spend management platform that allows them to grow.

"When you’re a startup you want to go as fast as you can and Payhawk helps us with that."

Scalability is the most important thing about our solution for Payflow. "The amount of work you do when you have 10, 20, 30, or 100 people isn't going to change much. After all, what you do is distribute more cards to more departments," Menardo says. With Payhawk, Payflow has dedicated IBANs in euros and pounds sterling, while, for other currencies, they benefit from more competitive exchange rates than those offered by traditional banks.

Finally, Menardo highlights the importance of integrations. "For us, they're key to scale the model," he says. "We often work with TravelPerk when we need a plane ticket or hotel. And because it's integrated with Payhawk, it saves us a ton of time because people don't even have to upload a receipt. Everything is integrated!"

Book a demo today if you want to know more about how to improve your processes, get set for scaling, and take control of spending just like Payflow did.