Pay Advance feature of PaySauce. Photo: Supplied
Software-as-a-Service fintech PaySauce is expanding into Australia, backed by a $4 million capital raising.
The company, established 10 years ago, was placing about $3m of new shares with institutional and other investors at an issue price of 26 cents a share, with a further $1m of shares available to New Zealand investors.
The issue price represented a 7.1 percent discount to the last closing share price of 28-cents on Friday, 12 December.
Chief executive Asantha Wijeyeratne said Paysauce had a target market of about 700,000 microbusinesses and was relocating to Melbourne to work with PaySauce Australia's executive team.
"The indications are very, very positive," he said, and there was a gap in the market.
"They are looking for a simple solution that changes the way they're currently managing all of their payroll needs, which is fragmented," he said, adding that small businesses also needed the ability to account for 123 separate industrial awards when calculating their payroll.
"What we've done is we've built that complexity directly into the solution so they don't need to do that."
He said PaySauce was also able to recruit a top level executive team with a proven ability to drive market growth in Australia.
"We made a very significant hire in bringing on Chris Ridd, who is the executive director for Australia, who built the Xero business in Australia.
"He took that business from about 2000 or 3000 subscribers to 300,000 subscribers in five years," he said.
"He is hugely experience, incredibility connected and to have someone like Chris on the team is a significant advantage."
Paysauce's shares were currently in a trading halt, which was expected to lift no later than the market open on 17 December, or at completion of the placement of shares.
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