Growing GangbustersNext Up
Growing Gangbusters
Since its foundation in 2018, Split Payments has enjoyed consistent growth, enabling it to manage its talent requirements with certainty and predictability. But an extraordinary acceleration in its payment solutions business in the last year has, perhaps not surprisingly, required a significant increase in brilliant people to service it.
In March 2020, the award-winning Byron Bay-based payments innovator had 18 team members. That number now sits at 46, with an astonishing 26 new faces coming aboard since January 2021.
“The reality is, even going back 6 months, we had an idea about where the bar should be in terms of expected growth, and where we wanted to get to. We quickly found that we had underestimated things by quite a bit,” says Split’s CEO, Chris Jewell.
Split’s revenue has grown by 388% year on year and continues to grow at 40% month-on-month in FY 2021.
With a rapidly growing and diverse client base driving that growth, and customers more engaged with Split’s solutions than ever before, the business revisited its forecasts and reinforced the non-negotiables around its commitment to technology and innovation, and to team culture.
“So when we looked at that accelerated rate of growth, and where that trajectory is taking us, we identified some resourcing gaps we needed to fill to support and propel that growth forward,” adds Chris.
The recruitment drive saw an expansion of the executive team, as well as new faces being added to engineering and technology areas, sales and relationships, as well as solutions, operations and finance.
“We touched on technology and engineering, we looked at operations, we built out our sales functionality—because that’s where we’re seeing a lot of that customer engagement—and around the edges as well through finance, transaction monitoring and compliance,” says Chris.
The Byron Bay Effect
Since its earliest days, Split has embraced remote-working flexibility, enabling the recruitment of precisely the right people in terms of expertise and fit, regardless of their location. And while Split team members contribute to all parts of the business from six Australian states, the Byron Bay headquartered FinTech is rightly proud of the fact that nearly half of its talent is Northern Rivers local.
“Even though our people come from all over the place, the influence of our local cohort is significant—Byron Bay is in Split’s DNA,” says Sarah Wagner, Split’s HR Manager.
“Our culture is built around a spirit of inclusivity, collaboration, respect and open-mindedness—all ‘Byron Bay’ values that drive creativity and imaginative thinking,” adds Sarah.
Anchored in the region, the company aims to create opportunities that encourage future generations of locals—regardless of their background—to stay and forge brilliant, rewarding careers in this energised corner of country New South Wales.
“This is an exciting time for Split. Our service and solutions are exceeding expectations, and driving growth by helping customers differentiate their own offerings through payment innovation. Going forward, the speed at which money will move around the planet, and the agility merchants will demand are going to require more innovation as we build Split’s seamless, cost effective bridge to the payment solutions of the future,’ says Chris.
