🎈 Five years of Payflip. That means five years of unexpected twists, learning by doing, and above all: keeping at it. We didn’t start with a business plan full of buzzwords, but with honest conversations about something everyone was skirting around: compensation. Now, we’re a team of over 40 people, working with more than 1,600 companies, and 50,000 employees are truly taking control of their pay packages. What a ride!
Cédric: Maura, five years of Payflip, congratulations! But take us back: how did it all really start?
Maura: (laughs) “It started with a frustration, like many good ideas do. Back then, I was an employee myself and had optimized my own salary package, including a cafeteria plan and mobility budget. Colleagues asked me how I did it, even HR managers barely dared to touch the topic. That’s when I thought: this has to change.”Together with Filip and John, two friends who shared the same gut feeling about pay, the seed was planted. “Two weeks after our first café conversation, we signed up for KBC Start It. I had never pitched before, I even had to google the word ‘pitch’.”
Cédric: And back then, Payflip was called…?
Maura: “Schmeagle!” (laughs) “Our WhatsApp group is still called that. We did everything in the evenings and on weekends, until we simply had no time left. Clients would call us at work, using a phone number listed at the bottom of our free website. When we suddenly started sending invoices under my girlfriend’s STD testing company’s name, we knew: it was time to really get started.”
From the hallway to the headlines
In five years, Payflip grew from a side project to a scale-up with 40 colleagues. The breakthroughs? “Our partnership with Liantis was an early turning point. But the real validation came when Smartfin invested in our capital in 2023. That’s one of those moments when you realize: okay, we’ve started something that really matters.”
Cédric: What makes your approach so different?
Maura: “We’ve never tiptoed around the subject of pay. Why is it such a taboo? For us, salary is the first form of financial literacy. We want people to understand their pay, and we want HR managers to feel empowered to communicate transparently about it. Flexible compensation isn’t a ‘nice extra’ for us—it’s a driving force for culture, motivation, and retention.”
“We just got started – and five years later, there are forty of us."
The impact? “50,000 people more conscious of their pay”
“Today, around 50,000 employees use our tool. I can honestly say that at least 25% of them now know more about their pay than they did before Payflip. And that is exactly why we do this.”
But there’s also an impact on the HR side: “We’re turning soft-HR profiles into hard-HR players. HR managers who used to feel unsure about pay now feel full-stack and confident.”
The dream? Payflip as a synonym for compensation
Cédric: And what does the future hold?
Maura: “We want people, when they think about compensation, to automatically think of Payflip. Just like you think of Zoom when it comes to video calls. We’re not quite there yet, but I believe that with our focus on both employers and employees, we’re truly bridging the gap. In five years? Payflip will be the reference point.”
Cédric: Finally, what are you most proud of?
Maura: “Without a doubt: the team. There are forty of us, and there’s truly electricity in the room when we work together. As founders, we’re incredibly proud of our ‘sports team’. By the way, HR isn’t a separate function for us—it’s woven into who we are as founders. That winning team feeling? I never want to lose it.”
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