Dive Brief:

• Digital bill pay company Paymentus is counting on the return of employees to offices, as the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs, to lift demand for its services and speed up onboarding of customers. With customers’ tech teams back together, Paymentus CEO Dushyant Sharma expects adoption of services to pick up.
• After slowing during earlier stages of the pandemic, bookings for new business – especially in the corporate customer segment – and onboarding have picked up steam in the fourth quarter of last year and so far this quarter, Sharma said Thursday during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. He noted companies bringing employees back to offices has positively impacted both, as such moves by big tech companies Google and Amazon have influenced other companies.
• Paymentus reported net income of $957,000 for the fourth quarter, down from $4.7 million a year earlier for the period. The company’s fourth-quarter revenue climbed 22%, to $132.2 million.

Dive Insight:

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Paymentus exceeded its goal of securing $100 million in new bookings in 2022, Sharma said. Based on that, the company is set up to meet the top end of its 2023 revenue guidance range simply by onboarding all of the customers that have already been booked, he said. 

The uncertain macroeconomic environment is a factor, however, and may affect the pace at which the company’s customers pursue implementation and onboarding of Paymentus’s services, he said.

Currently, Paymentus has a backlog of booked clients that have yet to implement the company’s services, and that onboarding timing is largely controlled by those clients, Sharma noted. In addition to the benefit of tech staff in offices assisting implementation, Sharma said that meeting with customers again should also boost demand.

Paymentus is projecting revenue growth this year of $575 million to $600 million, or between 16% and 21%, according to earnings materials.

The company this month signed Citizens Financial Group as a client, providing electronic bill pay and other money services for the banks’ retail customers, it announced Feb. 15.

“We believe this is a very good sign of things to come for bill payment sales to financial institutions as we have larger and larger institutions evaluating our modern product to replace their legacy solutions,” Sharma said Thursday. Most of the gains from the Citizens partnership will come after 2023, he said.  

During the quarter, Paymentus linked with a large real estate platform, to facilitate rental payments for it, Sharma said. The company also began working with a large mortgage services business. Sharma didn’t identify the name of either company during the call.

Paymentus in January announced it was teaming with Green Dot to broaden its cash bill payment capabilities. 

The company continued to grow its sales team in the quarter, contributing to a 67% jump in Paymentus’s sales and marketing costs to $73.3 million for the full year. 

As the company’s clients have grappled with inflation, Interim Chief Financial Officer Paul Seamon said Paymentus adjusted pricing for some clients in the fourth quarter, or is in talks to do so now.