Success Story


Payhawk's transformation with Google Cloud, scaling to Unicorn status - powered by Cloud Office

The Challenge

Managing employee expenses was a cumbersome process, marked by manual data entry and reconciliation. Finance teams struggled with multiple systems to handle credit card and cash payments, often lacking real-time visibility into spending. This challenge intensified as businesses expanded, with added complexities arising from new bank accounts, card issuers, and local accounting systems. Medium to large enterprises found this especially daunting.

The Solution

In 2018, Payhawk set out to revolutionize expense management by offering a unified solution that combined VISA company cards, reimbursable expenses, and accounts payable. Their innovative approach promised to automate processes, enhance efficiency, and support business expansion. To bring this vision to life and attract investments, they needed a scalable IT architecture, and Google Cloud emerged as the perfect fit. We did our best to make their journey even smoother. Together, we leveraged key Google Cloud services like Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Cloud SQL, Cloud Memorystore, Vision AI, Cloud Storage, Artifact Registry, and Firebase to build a secure and efficient infrastructure. With Google Cloud's suite of services, including Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring, Payhawk ensured operational excellence with minimal disruptions. The Google for Startups Cloud Program provided crucial credits, easing financial concerns and allowing them to concentrate on business growth.

The Result

The transition to Google Cloud allowed Payhawk to accelerate application development, issuing their first card in just eight months. With Google Cloud's support, they cultivated customer trust through quick issue resolution, error tracking, and single sign-on capabilities. The Google for Startups Cloud Program provided financial flexibility during the critical early stages of their business. Payhawk experienced remarkable growth, doubling in size in the first half of 2022. Google Cloud's scalability, generous pricing model, and standard services paved the way for sustainable expansion.

Today, Payhawk operates in 32 countries across Europe and the US, with plans to double their team by year-end. Their journey with Google Cloud has been transformative, allowing them to secure substantial investments, attain unicorn status with a $1 billion valuation, and continue their mission to revolutionize global expense management and financial operations. Google Cloud remains an invaluable technology partner in this incredible journey of growth and innovation.

 

 

I’m a CTO, not a DevOps specialist, but in less than a week I was able to set up a secure, reliable operating infrastructure. This enabled us to fast-track our application development and we were able to issue our first card in just eight months. Our Google Cloud partner, Cloud Office also gave us valuable assistance, guiding us through the deployment process and advising on Google Cloud’s extensive range of solutions.  

Boyko Karadzhov

Co-founder & CTO, Payhawk


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About: Payhawk

Payhawk's aspiration is to become the world’s biggest bank without holding a single dollar. They see the future as a marketplace where businesses can discover, manage and use multiple payment instruments (debit cards, credit cards, bank account etc.) powered by a single experience regardless of where money is kept. An experience where money follows the way you do business.

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Bulgaria, UK, USA, Germany, Spain, France, Netherlands, Lithuania

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About Cloud Office

Cloud Office is a Premier Google Cloud partner with a specialisation in Work Transformation and experts in Google Cloud Compute,Cloud Productivity, Digital Natives and Data Analytics.