Time for a New Era in Payroll: Papaya Global’s Journey to the TIME100 List

Papaya Global is the first ever payroll and payments company to make the TIME100 list of the most influential companies in the world. This is a huge deal not just for us, but for people, for workers, everywhere.

Payroll isn’t just a technical process that needed to be solved by software. Payroll is a force for borderless employee empowerment and a vehicle of economic flexibility, for countries, organizations, and individuals alike.

That’s our vision, and having TIME recognize it by including us on their 2023 Most Influential Companies list is an extremely powerful validation that our vision of payroll as a force for good is now a full-blown reality.

Processing and delivering payroll globally is a highly complex, sensitive, and nuanced business process – and a sophisticated yet easy-to-use cloud-based SaaS solution is how it can be made seamless. AI-based automations and integrations are how you streamline it. Top-notch technical security measures are how you keep it safe, and technological innovation is how you make it more efficient – helping companies move away from outdated, mostly manual processes into a truly modernized era of operations.

But none of these steps would have come to life without the very clear primary vision that payroll is so much more than all of this.

No progress could’ve been possible without the understanding that payroll is the bloodline of every company on the face of the earth, the one aspect of business that regularly touches and directly impacts every worker. It’s not only the biggest expense of most companies, but it’s also a process that enables financial-first thinking for individuals.

Papaya was built on this understanding, with the mission to move payroll to the forefront of the employer-employee relationship. We democratize payroll by elevating it to a point where it is recognized as a strategic tentpole of modern life; where it provides people with better access to funds and supports bigger and better financial decisions.

As a SaaS fintech company aiming at helping enterprise organizations streamline payroll and payments operations, inclusion in prestigious SaaS, fintech, cloud or payroll lists are all milestone goals of ours, and achieving them is a fantastic industry stamp of approval.

But the TIME100 Most Influential Companies list is different. It does not focus on any specific industry, let alone a software company dedicated to solving the pains and complexities of global payroll and payments.

For that matter, TIME’s list could have been all about organizations making positive changes in science, agriculture, sustainability, education, climate change, community, inclusion, mental health, and so many more incredibly critical elements of life. This has been the case in the list’s previous renditions.

But that’s exactly the point – making it to the 2023 TIME100 list means that the editorial leadership at TIME grasps the cruciality of payroll to business and life. They understand that payroll should no longer be viewed as a mere administrative string of compliance-driven tasks – that it can and should be viewed as a channel for change, and as a positive influence over people and economies everywhere.

And now that it’s clearly a movement – you’re more than welcome to join.