Don’t let the name fool you; Paymetric is more than just a payments company. Though the company has been helping businesses make secure payments electronically since 1998, its suite of payment acceptance and data security solutions has assisted many of the world’s most popular brands with some of the more challenging payment processes, such as the order-to-cash process, improving electronic payment acceptance, and alleviating some of the burden brought on by PCI compliance. It is these reasons that Paymetric considers itself a technology company, rather than just another payments company. And this fact is helping bring the best talent to the organization.
“We integrate and secure payments to help reduce the scope and cost of PCI compliance while mitigating the risk of a data breach,” says Travis Barrs, Paymetric’s senior vice president of human resources and legal services. “We can secure payment acceptance for web stores, mobile apps, legacy applications, ERP, and CRM systems.”
When Paymetric hired Barrs in 2008, his primary focus was helping sales leadership negotiate and contract with customers more quickly and more efficiently. In 2011, he absorbed the human resources department and made the decision that human resources should be viewed as a strategic imperative, not simply a tactical concern. Since then, he’s been in charge of building a world-class corporate culture and recruiting top-shelf talent to help the company continue to grow and to remain a leader in secure-payment acceptance.
Recruiting can be easier said than done for Paymetric, given the competition for talent in the technology industry. Larger companies with almost unlimited resources and household brand names can be highly appealing to aspiring workers. Barrs knows it is tough to compete, but hopes that Paymetric’s technology plays a big part in bringing in outstanding talent. Its proprietary payment acceptance and data-security solutions are at the epicenter of its clients’ environments, and the prospect of playing a part in changing how the payments industry works is a card Barrs’ team can and does play when they’re competing for talent.
“That alone, when you’re recruiting, is a tremendously effective tool,” Barrs says. “You’re telling people who don’t have a lot of experience in finance or electronic payments, but who are clearly very talented developers, ‘I can give you the opportunity to disrupt an entire industry.’ That is hugely effective and very powerful.”
Recruiting in the payments industry is also competitive because the space offers strong job security. At a time when the global recession affected many companies and industries, Paymetric’s business grew by 40 percent, largely due to a greater focus on credit card and alternative payments. Today, Paymetric has around one hundred employees, who are attracted both by the company’s growth and the work Paymetric is doing with widely recognizable, global brands. “We have more than 500 customers, some of which are the largest global brands,” Barrs says. “We can recruit people right out of school and say, ‘Hey, do you want to work with the biggest and best companies in the world? Okay, well you don’t have to go to a company with thousands of employees and hundreds of offices. You can work with and support these brands at Paymetric.’”
Paymetric may be able to offer the chance to help disrupt the payments landscape and work with big name companies, but is that enough to help bring in some of the best and brightest people the technology world has to offer? In the case it isn’t, Barrs has strived to make sure the work environment and corporate culture make Paymetric a place where people want to spend their workday. Larger companies may have brand recognition on their side, but there’s also an added pressure of working for a billion-dollar company. Meanwhile, Paymetric is still growing and can invest in its employees and provide growth opportunities within the company.
“We have found that good talent wants to come to a company that is growing and is working with innovative technology,” Barrs says. “It doesn’t matter how many years of experience that they’ve got: they want to be able to be a part of something big, and we can give them the opportunity to do that.”
The Paymetric approach to recruiting is working. In 2014, it doubled its sales and marketing teams and added resources in finance, security, and operations. “There’s so much opportunity for a company like us that touches all of these different industries and markets,” Barrs says. “We can do anything; if we want to be disruptive in payments, we can do that. If we want to be disruptive in mobile technology, we can do that as well. The key for us is the talent. We’ve developed a culture that encourages our employees to bring new ideas to the table so that we can offer world-class solutions to Fortune 500 companies.”
