Paving the way for Paytently

Starting your own business is always a daunting prospect, but when you encounter bright and bold go-getters such as CEO Sam Barrett, you can’t help but be inspired by his infectious spirit of initiative and achievement. It’s no wonder Paytently are making huge strides in the industry, paving the way for the future generations of the payment sector with their tech-savvy products. We sat down for a chat with Sam to discover more about what Paytently is all about.

What had inspired you to start your own payment company?

Having worked for several payment companies over the years, my plethora of expertise in the payments landscape has given me a very good understanding of what I enjoy and what I don’t. When you’ve been in the business for as long as I have, you start to lose interest in building companies for other people, and it gets to a point where you just want to take an entrepreneurial leap. This is why I had decided to start my own organisation.

I’ve always been very motivated by the idea of building financial technology products from scratch, taking into consideration modern design and sophisticated architecture. Looking at the current competition, there were certain gaps I knew I could easily fill.

Having my own organisation, however, daunting as it seemed, meant I could build my own team, and take full responsibility over the motivation and culture of the company. Having my co-founders by my side means that I’m working with people whom I can trust, and with whom I share the same vision.

Tell us more about your vision.

My vision was to create a payments company that was specifically built for the industries in which we have expertise – high-risk betting and gaming - and to offer a boutique feel that can compete in the major leagues.

We wanted to serve our long-standing partners from the last fifteen years with great product and tech, as well as provide excellent customer service. Paytently ultimately focuses on transparency and reliability, with the best experts behind it.

Built from scratch, the architecture and design of the tech we provide is completely modernised, and we’ve really focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning. It’s not just a buzz word! We’ve automated and simplified the payment process by developing innovative technologies in-house. It’s incredibly important that our clients enjoy logging into Paytently, and being able to manage their payment flows through our intelligent orchestration platform.

What are your main challenges going to be?

As a payment platform, there’s always the struggle of maintaining a great selection of choices for our prospective merchants. The payment sector across the world is incredibly fragmented, with different markets having their own preferred methods of payment. So, we need to guarantee that we can help businesses scale globally. To do this, we need to continuously build new partnerships with international banking partners and alternative payment methods, in order to sustain that great selection. We want to be a one-stop shop for our customers.

Another challenge we face are the never-ending changes in regulation within the industries which we serve. New markets are being regulated all the time; high street banks are constantly restricting and limiting the gaming industry with treasury and money movement, and that can cause major disruption for our clients. Our focus on business banking will hopefully alleviate some of these concerns for our top clientele.

There are a few very successful payment companies around. How do you plan on getting ahead of the competition?

We have competition which we aspire to be like. They keep us incredibly motivated in what we do. But there is another form of competition, one that hasn’t honed in on the areas which we’ve decided to focus on as a company.

Paytently’s edge as a company is a detailed focus on modern technology. It allows us to be incredibly agile with what we’re offering. We’re not just going out into the market as a payment gateway. We’re also providing solutions to help businesses open bank accounts in an environment where regulation is tightening for high-risk sectors. We also offer a very robust platform for customers to send and move money across many different currencies. Our aim is to drastically improve operational efficiencies, streamlining and automating processes such as fraud flagging and payments orchestration. We’re essentially here to simplify clunky processes, and deliver a service that achieves high acceptance rates.

You’re going to be hiring a brand-new team. Who are you on the lookout for?

We’re looking for enthusiastic, passionate payment evangelists that want to come in and help us build innovative and pioneering technology. We want people who are ambitious about changing the payments landscape, and changing financial technology that people are engaging with today. The people we hire have to be as passionate about what we do as our founding team.

After the pandemic, people’s expectations of the workplace have shifted. What has your approach been so far?

We’re hiring people who will be solely responsible for their roles. I’m not concerned about where they’re doing it from. I don’t need to physically see them in person to witness their value. I haven’t seen some of our people for the last week and a half, but I could still see the amount of exceptional value they are adding.

Could you tell us a bit more about the people in your team?

I’m working with people with whom I’ve always wanted to collaborate. I was able to rope in Nick Tucker as one of my co-founders. At the time, he was VP of Financial Services for TrueLayer, but he’s now joined us as my Chief Revenue Officer. He was also my right-hand at Trustly, and I think a lot of people were surprised (and happy!) by this move. I’m really grateful to have him. We have built a successful business before, and I’m sure we’ll do it again.

There’s also Laurent Reysbosch as our COO, with whom I had started this business with as an original concept. He had always been my competitor in the industry, so to have him on board with Nick makes us a very strong team. Lastly there is our CTO, Philip Smith, who’s led large scale technical and engineering teams at Merrill Lynch, Northern Trust, and Lloyds Bank. We are incredibly lucky to have very talented people who are experts in the field.

Your wife Jasmina is also part of the team as Head of Commercial Operations. How do you feel about working with family?

The honest truth is that it’s been an absolute blessing! Our interaction at work is minimal. The safety net is that there’s a team of people between us, and she doesn’t report to me and I don’t have to micro-manage her. The glass is half-full because when we return to the dinner table, neither of us want to talk about work, and this has opened up a new discussion on the topic of life. It’s dramatically changed our lifestyle, as we’re both passionate about building the same thing.

What advice would you give to someone who’s thinking about starting their own business?

Do it. I’d wish I’d done it sooner, and I didn’t realise how many people there are out there who genuinely want to help you. Reach out to people from your past and tell them what you’re up to and your ideas. You’ll be surprised by how much interest they’ll show you. You’re not alone, and even though it’s scary to leave behind a secure and stable job, plan ahead so that you can take a relatively safe leap. And don’t forget that if it doesn’t work out in the beginning, you could always get another job. It’s easy to find money, and it’s easy to start your own business if you are passionate enough about what you are building, and if you build it, they will come.