Dive Brief:

• Papaya Global has added Citigroup’s Citibank as its second major sponsor bank, following on its tie to JPMorgan Chase, according to a press release from the New York-based payroll payments provider shared with Payments Dive last week. 
• The new Citibank relationship will allow Global Payments to expand its client list to new geographic regions, Papaya Global CEO Eynat Guez said in an interview last week. Together, Citi and JPMorgan host about 85% to 90% of the company’s business, Guez said.
• “The relationship with Citibank has been a relationship we've been building for years,” Guez said, noting that the tie was initiated in 2022. “As you go to larger banks, sometimes it takes time.”

Dive Insight:

Papaya Global’s software supports corporate clients in their payments to employees and contractors globally. While the company has embedded its services for those payroll clients, it has also been building a standalone segment for other business-to-business clients.

The standalone segment is becoming an increasingly important part of the company’s business, making up about 40% of its revenue last year, with the expectation now that it will generate about 55% of revenue this year, Guez said in the interview.

Papaya Global booked just over $100 million in annual revenue last year and expects to nearly double that this year with about $200 million, she said. The company also expects to become profitable this year, Guez said.

Papaya Global’s cross-border payments are delivered in 160 countries in 130 currencies, with clients in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia. About half of its clients reside in the U.S. and about half of its revenue derives from the U.S. market, she said.

The company expanded its cross-border payments capability after its 2022 acquisition of London-based money transfer business Azimo, which added money transfer licenses to Papaya’s operations. When making payroll payments to employees globally, Papaya Global handles all the tax compliance and benefit detail complexities across borders.

The addition of Citi as a sponsor will keep enhancing the offering. “Multinational organizations simply cannot rely on error-prone manual inputs, capricious data security, changing FX rates, and erratic land dates when paying employees and contractors,” Papaya Global noted in its release provided to Payments Dive.

Papaya Global (not to be confused with bill-pay provider Papaya Payments) has raised about $450 million, according to the release, since its founding in 2016 from high-profile fintech venture capitalists, including Sequoia Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners.

The CEO expects the company to make more acquisitions to keep sharpening its payments capabilities. While prices for targets have generally been high in recent years, Guez sees them becoming more reasonable at this point, she said.

“Actually this year, I would say even kind of in the next quarter, we will be announcing between one to two acquisitions that we are currently working on,” Guez said.