Payen is a fast-growing FinTech company that provides gateway Payment and FX services to online merchants. Having launched in 2010, the business has grown steadily, winning three UK high-growth awards in 2019 and now has an annual revenue of over £14 million.

As a fast growing business we need lean processes that can scale. Aqilla has continued to deliver this, even as we’ve added more services, currencies, and transactions. We’ve had no issues with the volume of transactions, and Aqilla’s support team has always been prompt and helpful.

As a global payments company, Payen deals with huge volumes of complex multi-currency transactions on a daily basis. Their accounting system needs to be able to scale effortlessly to these volumes as well as handle the unique nuances of multi-currency and foreign exchange. Payen’s Head of Finance Hannah James endorses Aqilla as an adaptable and easy to use accounting solution to support Payen as it grows.

Limitless scalability that supports growth

Payen’s vision is to provide innovative solutions with a personal touch. As such they’ve continuously improved their 100% proprietary technology to improve the process at every step in the payment value chain. Most recently, this includes extending their global options for alternative payment methods, as well as offering business bank accounts and forex services. As a Cloud-based service, Aqilla effortlessly scales to handle Payen’s growing number of currencies and transactions.

With our new Treasury Service and FX service, we now hold balances for our clients and make payments on their behalf. Aqilla is able to handle this easily. Generally it’s really straightforward to make adaptations to our account structures and add users as needed, also, the support team has always been helpful and quick to respond when we do have any questions.

Flexibility to handle the global payments ecosystem

Global payment transactions involve numerous touchpoints. As a payment gateway, Payen sits in the middle of this process; “our process in unusual in that we receive money from our customers” said Hannah, “but Aqilla has the flexibility to handle this”.

Extensive multi-currency features

Payen also offers FX services, so multi-currency is key to their finance function. Aqilla features simple but sophisticated handling of multi-currency transactions with extensive multi-currency capabilities throughout its ledgers. Hannah is finding Aqilla’s revaluation process particularly useful:

“We hold high volumes of client funds in multiple currencies and the FX differences can be substantial. Aqilla has revaluation functionality which means that we can easily calculate and post unrealised currency exchange gains and losses. We can also deal with complex exchanges, for example, we can process a transaction in one currency and settle in another. The whole FX process in Aqilla is intuitive and seamless.”

Powerful reporting built into the system

Aqilla’s reporting system features an easy to use report editor and query builder that lets you create custom reports that can easily be extended across multiple companies and currencies. Aqilla’s API also allows it to connect to other business apps, which Hannah plans to use in the future to consolidate reports for Payen’s two UK-based entities.

“Aqilla meets all of our reporting needs. I particularly find the ability to drill into accounting categories very useful, avoiding the need to manipulate data outside of the system, downloading it every time. I can see the detail I need through simple navigation,” said Hannah. “We hope to continue to build on the reporting capabilities in Aqilla by creating a more automated method of consolidation using Sharperlight, however we already have a good level of business intelligence and the information is easy to extract.”

We hold high volumes of client funds in multiple currencies and the FX differences can be substantial. Aqilla has revaluation functionality which means that we can easily calculate and post unrealised currency exchange gains and losses.

Key takeaways

Aqilla was already in place at Payen when Hannah joined the team. She explains why she’s never had cause to consider changing systems: