Global online payments company building on Kyiv roots

“I went to Kyiv and met Vova (Vladimir) who turned out to be a great guy and we decided to work together and we’ve been working together for 11 years now,” says Gunday.

Paymentwall is a global payment service provider for game development companies, software as a service (SaaS) providers, dating sites, TV streaming providers, and news organizations (such as the Kyiv Post).

The company is headquartered in San Francisco and has 10 offices around the world. It serves 70,000 merchants in more than 200 countries.

Gunday found Kovalyov, at that time a recent computer science graduate of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, through a freelancing website.

“I was planning on building a global e-commerce platform where people could sell things globally,” Gunday recalls. “He bid on the project and he was really meticulous and hardworking. He produced the result for me and I decided to meet him in Kyiv.”

The two tried to develop a couple of other services until they finally settled on the idea of a platform that “could be used to collect money all over the world.”

Gunday recalls that Kovalyov was essential. “He was really a chief technology officer there for me. Not that I’m not technical, but together we understood what we had to do and we executed really well together.”

Paymentwall become profitable in the second month of its existence. According to ain.ua, in 2013 the company’s revenue was around $50 million, and in 2014, according to Gunday, profit grew by 50 percent. The annual amount of transactions that the company processes equals billions of dollars, while the official number is undisclosed. Forty percent of revenue comes from game development companies, 30 percent from SaaS providers, 10 percent from dating sites and five percent from TV-streaming services.

Paymentwall’s commission depends on the country and the payment type. It also charges on a “revenue share” basis by taking its own fee of 1 to 5 percent on top of the payment system fee.

The Kyiv office has served as the company’s research and development center for more than five years. “There’s a really good talent pool here in Ukraine,” Gunday says. “We hire people from top universities like KPI and Taras Shevchenko University and similar ones.”

Now Paymentwall employs over 150 people globally. Recently it opened an office in Beijing as 20 percent of its business now comes from China. It is already planning to set up an office in Moscow as well.

Depending on the location, Paymentwall hires different types of specialists. “We identified that Ukrainians have great talent for statistical analysis, engineering, machine learning and also project and product management,” says Gunday.

Around 60 people are employed at Paymentwall’s Kyiv office.

In order to improve the skills of its Ukrainian employees, Paymentwall sends them on rotation programs to other offices around the world. They can spend up to one year at a different office, and after the end of the program they can relocate again to another Paymentwall division abroad. As Gunday says this ensures that employees “experience a mix of cultures” and “think globally.”

Nearly 100 Ukrainian companies call Paymentall their client. They usually target global markets and need to process payments from abroad. Kyiv Post is one of them too.

“Ukrainian companies have recently been experiencing problems because of unfortunate discrimination by U.S. and European companies, and obviously a military conflict is not helping Ukraine’s reputation for credit card processing or payments processing,” Gunday says. “So we are here to help and we will continue to help the local market to process payments globally.”

Gunday considers Paymentwall to be an American company, although he does emphasize the big contribution of the Ukrainian team. That is why, despite the economic downturn, Paymentwall does not plan to move out of Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian element is blended into our company’s culture. I think that would be something impossible to change,” he said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe.