US HR firm Deel acquires PaySpace, a 20-year-old SA payroll provider

Deel, the American HR company valued at $12 billion, is acquiring PaySpace, a 20-year-old Africa-based provider of payroll and HR software, for an undisclosed amount, per a TechCrunch report. This marks the third acquisition of an African company by a global company in the past year and a half.

The financial details of the deal are undisclosed, but the acquisition is the largest Deel has made to date.

This acquisition will further solidify the African presence of Deel, which has been providing services in all African countries except four—Congo Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and the Central African Republic—through its native technology or that of other partner companies, including PaySpace.

Prior to the acquisition, PaySpace, a Johannesburg-based startup, had been providing payroll services for Deel in 10 African countries. This acquisition grants Deel—which previously had just 5 payroll engines of its own—full ownership of the 45 payroll engines that PaySpace has built over the past 15 years, according to Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz.

“Our internal team was dying to acquire them and have the ability to do on-the-spot calculations. Theirs is one of the best technologies we’ve ever seen … We had to do a lot of convincing,” Bouaziz told TechCrunch.

Founded in 2007, PaySpace established itself as a cloud-based solution to address the inefficiencies of traditional payroll and HR software. The brainchild of Bruce, Clyde, and Warren Clark—brothers—alongside George Karageorgiades, the platform caters to over 14,000 customers across 44 countries across Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

According to managing director Sandra Crous, PaySpace has been growing by over 30% annually. This acquisition allows Deel to strengthen its footprint in Africa.

It also signals the interest of global firms in Africa. Other similar acquisitions include private equity firm Medius’s $100 million purchase of expense management firm Expensya, Stripe’s purchase of Nigerian fintech Paystack, and BioNTech’s £562 million acquisition of InstaDeep, an AI firm founded in Tunisia.

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