Richmond Times Dispatch Startup Spotlight

Richmond Times Dispatch Startup Spotlight: FinTech firm Paymerang adds people and space

Source: Richmond Times Dispatch

Paymerang Enrollment Manager, Mary Alice Byrd (center, rear) addresses a staff meeting at the Boulders office park in Chesterfield County. The company’s space is more than double the size of its previous office.

After raising $26 million in investments last year, Chesterfield County-based financial services technology firm Paymerang has added jobs and moved to a bigger office.

“Things have been going well — we are growing fast,” said Nasser Chanda, Paymerang’s chief executive officer. “We are signing on new clients and new partnerships.”

Paymerang competes within a fast-growing market often referred to as FinTech — short for financial technology.

The company provides a technology platform that allows clients — which include health care providers, educational institutions, manufacturers and other businesses — to pay all their vendors electronically.

Since it was founded in 2010, Paymerang has grown to become a processor of more than $2 billion in payments a year to about 80,000 suppliers nationwide, with 75 percent receiving electronic payments.

The company has recently taken a bigger step into the banking market. In March, Paymerang announced it had partnered with Community Bankers’ Bank, a Chesterfield-based institution that provides services for community banks, to offer Paymerang’s electronic payables solution to that company’s client community banks and their commercial customers.

The Paymerang service will let Community Bankers’ client banks to automate their accounts payable disbursements.

“The banking vertical is very important for us,” Chanda said. “These small community banks have the challenge of larger banks coming into their markets with competitive products. What we can offer is a solution for them” by outsourcing their accounts payable processing to Paymerang.

That allows the banks to focus on managing their core business, Chanda said.

In March 2018, the company received a $26 million investment from Aldrich Capital Partners, a Vienna-based private equity firm, to help the company expand and hire more employees.

A few months after the investment, Paymerang moved from its 5,000-square-foot office just off Midlothian Turnpike into an office in the Boulders office park, more than doubling its office space.

The company, which said last year that it expected to hire more than 100 people over the next five years, now employs more than 60.

Chanda said the company has benefited especially from a deep talent pool in both finance and technology in the Richmond region.

“We have grown our leadership team into a much deeper and stronger team” Chanda said. “We have had expertise coming to us from places like Capital One and Genworth.”

Chief Technology Officer Andy Savage, Director of Operations Greg Marcel and Human Resources Director Gloria Garber are among those on the leadership team who have joined Paymerang in the past year, with experience at other corporations in the region such as Capital One, Genworth, Anthem, Impact Makers and Unboxed Technology.

“The next piece of the puzzle is midmanagement,” Chanda said. “We are hiring professional leaders of teams. We are bringing in project managers. We are hiring salespeople and developers.”

Source: Richmond Times Dispatch