Until now, the economics of global payroll — a payroll platform that actually covers the entire globe — didn’t make sense. But now, the combination of cloud-native technology and an employer-of-record business model makes it work.

You’re a business running a global operation. Wouldn’t it be great if you could effortlessly hire the best people in the world to power your company?

In today’s global economy, the shift to work-from-anywhere has opened up the possibility of recruiting talent wherever they live. It’s no longer necessary to relocate a high-caliber software engineer from Singapore to Silicon Valley. So what’s stopping you from hiring that perfect candidate and letting them work from their home country?

A major hurdle could be getting that engineer, or any international worker, paid. Country-specific compliance, along with ever-evolving statutory and regulatory requirements, pose enormous challenges. What works in Spain doesn’t meet the needs of Denmark. Besides needing to be geographically comprehensive, the payroll system must also be flexible to comply with laws and regulations, even as they change. The good news is that it can be done. But only with the right technology partner.

Overall, the traditional payroll industry hasn’t progressed much since the first business computers started spitting out payslips seven decades ago. Too often, payroll solutions have been piecemeal. Platforms required painstaking customization, which could not be easily adapted country to country. For every compliance issue that needed tweaking, the wait time to implement that change could take months.

Some skeptics say that even with today’s digital technology, a single global payroll platform simply can’t be built. They claim payroll is too complicated and too specialized. They also say the economics can’t work — that the revenue generated doesn’t cover the maintenance costs necessary to keep up with these ever-changing regulations across the globe, which is often called the “last mile” challenge.

But at Deel, we’re already doing it. Deel’s recent acquisition of Payspace, combined with the breadth of our local compliance expertise and Employer of Record (EOR) business model, makes it possible.

Currently, our native payroll engine delivers payslips to workers in more than 50 countries, with more coming online each month. Within five years, we aim to have a single, native global payroll engine that configures and scales to serve 100-plus countries.

So what are we doing differently that makes truly global payroll possible?

• Better tech: With PaySpace by Deel, employee wages, taxes, and deductions are easily calculated through our cloud-native platform, which is underpinned by a single, configurable payroll engine. Typically, vendors spend years building payroll support for a new country. With PaySpace, it takes only months. The cloud-native architecture and our first-of-its-kind statutory integrator mean new countries can be configured onto the PaySpace platform at unprecedented speed. Tax and legislative updates are made directly in the platform for each country, with the associated statutory reports available in the system. And the system facilitates real-time updates for continuous compliance.

• A local approach: In addition to PaySpace’s technology, Deel has local payroll and compliance experts serving 120+ countries. As soon as new legislation is passed, these experts review, interpret, and update the system — ensuring there is no lag in compliance. Before a new law came online last year in Kenya that drastically affected workers’ take-home pay, for example, our experts had already designed and tested an online calculator to configure the impact on individual pay slips. Everywhere we operate, payroll teams are ready to input information so that it can go live in the system when needed, with no hiccups in getting our clients’ teams paid on time.

• An economically-sustainable model: Deel allows companies to quickly hire employees anywhere in the world without those companies needing to set up their own legal entities. In the past, a payroll provider couldn’t cover the maintenance costs to keep up with tax and compliance rules in certain countries. The economics just weren’t worth it. But now Deel’s EOR business model can cover those costs, while the associated fees allow Deel to maintain a team of local experts and operate a modern tech stack in any country. Last-mile costs, as a result, don’t look as overwhelming in countries that were previously ruled too pricey to serve.

Thanks to our platform’s worldwide adaptability, our clients can count on a seamless experience, no matter where they are. Whether we’re configuring services in Brazil or Burkina Faso, our engine ensures a uniform process.

We believe the workplace of the future should have no borders and no restrictions on who can participate. A uniform system gives companies the freedom to hire talented people wherever they find them. And those workers ought to be able to work wherever they are needed, all the while enjoying a uniformly great experience. At Deel, we’re democratizing work for everyone, everywhere.