International payroll and workforce management platform KeyPay has partnered with Integrated Bank Payments solution Comma to provide users with the world's first open banking payroll system. By embedding an open banking payment journey, KeyPay are able to offer a full end-to-end payroll and workforce management solution to users which is immediately accessible and tailored to the business needs.

What is KeyPay?

KeyPay is an all-in-one, cloud-based payroll system serving over 750 partners globally across Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Singapore. The platform streamlines workforce management and payroll processes for accountants, bookkeepers and bureaus focussing on accuracy, automation and visibility.

What is Comma?

Comma is a London-based start-up backed by Connect Ventures and Octopus Ventures. Comma is focused on delivering Integrated Bank Payments to SMEs. Built with open banking at its heart, Comma aims to remove cognitive stress for business owners by making payments simple, automated and integrated into the financial tools used by businesses every day.

Why?

KeyPay and Comma share the core values of efficiency and automation. This can be achieved by affecting the lives of SMEs either directly or indirectly by providing in-house or outsourced finance teams with the tools they need to operate as best-in-class. This partnership was an obvious route to further innovation and bring payroll into the 21st century, saving SMEs time and hassle every month.

Timely payroll is crucial for keeping employees happy and morale high. A 2019 study by the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals revealed 21% of Britons changed jobs after being paid late. From the study, 39% of surveyed individuals had been paid late at least once with a quarter stating their productivity was lower as a direct result. The increase in employee turnover and decrease in output will also have detrimental effects on the business's bottom line while creating a negative culture within the company. For the employees themselves, almost half believed their employer didn't care about their well-being (48%) which caused undue stress (47%) and placed them in financial risk (40%). This shows just how important getting payroll correct and on time is.

Chris Deeson, UK Country Lead at KeyPay said: “Open banking is the future and as soon as I saw what the team at Comma was doing I knew we needed this. Our partners have been looking for an embedded payment process for some time and the Comma integration is the perfect solution for them and their SME clients.”

How it works + benefits:

Payments are made via open banking and are completely embedded within the payroll system. Once payroll has been processed by the user, Comma uses this data to automatically generate a payment journey which can be shared with clients (for accountants and bookkeepers) or paid in-house by a bank account holder. By effectively connecting the payslip information and the business bank account, Comma removes the requirement of manual entry from the payment cycle reducing the risk of error.

What makes this unique is that users aren’t required to set up an intermediary account or leave their payroll provider (KeyPay) to progress into a banking flow. Instead, the user is funnelled through an open banking journey allowing instant payment from existing bank accounts. Payment runs can also be shared for authorisation by bank account holders meaning that accountants and bookkeepers can share secure payment links with their clients for simple authentication. No more searching for PIN sentries, keying in references or copy-pasting payslips, everything is done through the click of a button.

Tom Beckenham, Founder of Comma said “Payments should be integrated. The digitalisation of payroll has come a long way and the payment is the final piece to that puzzle. SMEs shouldn’t need to bounce between systems just to run month-end and they certainly shouldn’t need to be copy-pasting data from spreadsheets into their bank account each time they pay staff. Working with KeyPay allows us to create the best payment experience for SMEs and external financial teams”.

KeyPay full user base will have access to the Comma integration and be able to pay their staff using Comma’s embedded payment journey in July.