Hello HR Tech enthusiasts,

When I heard HiBob was announcing its plan to launch an embedded US payroll solution, I knew it was more than another feature drop in the increasingly crowded world of HR tech.

For HiBob, payroll is a redefinition of their competitive strategy.

‍We had the opportunity to sit down with HiBob CEO, Ronni Zehavi, and he shared how he knew that “Payroll and HCM are twins.”

But deciding when and how to unify them has been the company’s strategic puzzle for nearly a decade.

(Watch the full interview here)

Why Payroll, Why Now

HiBob has always positioned itself as the “mid-size, modern, multinational” HCM platform.

For most of its history, that meant prioritizing the employee experience and leaving payroll to partners.This was a conscious decision: building a payroll engine from scratch is costly, complex, and full of regulatory traps.

But in the US especially, payroll has been a deal breaker in some competitive evaluations.

Zehavi acknowledged that HiBob missed opportunities because they didn’t check the payroll box.

In the UK, HiBob solved this by acquiring Pento. In the US, they chose a different route: partnering with Gusto for embedded payroll. Different strategies, but the same destination, a commitment to delivering a payroll experience fully aligned with HiBob’s UX first philosophy.

This dual-track approach reflects the ambition and the future of HiBob, it’s about control, integration, and trust.

Payroll as a Cultural Shift

Introducing payroll isn’t just a product expansion - it’s a transformation of how a company operates at its core.

Zehavi was blunt: “[There is] zero tolerance when it comes to payroll and benefits. No excuses.”HiBob, like many modern SaaS companies, has earned its reputation by moving fast - prioritizing innovation, flexibility, and intuitive design.

But payroll introduces an entirely different mandate: reliability, precision, and redundancy.

• For the product team: the standard shifts from “ship fast” to “ship flawlessly.” That’s why HiBob staffed nearly 100 people in payroll-specific engineering and customer success roles.
• For customer success: payroll transforms HiBob into an even more comprehensive service provider, with the added stakes of ensuring employees are paid accurately, on time, every time.
• For sales and marketing: payroll reshapes the pitch. HiBob is now firmly an all-in-one HR + Payroll platform, bringing CFOs into the buying cycle.

In our July newsletter, we talked about how embedded payroll can go wrong if the right people, expertise and attention aren’t paid to the service. HiBob’s early investments are encouraging, though it’s still the area I’ll be watching most closely.

The CFO Angle

Payroll is also about expanding HiBob’s circle of influence. Historically, HiBob was a CHRO-driven purchase. Payroll makes the CFO a central stakeholder.

As Zehavi put it: “People are the number one asset for every business… Payroll is the baseline when a CFO thinks about HR.

‍”That statement connects the payroll launch to HiBob’s CFO strategy. With payroll, HiBob is fully realizing the finance-HR connection, building on existing investments in compensation management, workforce planning, and FP&A (via their Mosaic acquisition).

Innovation in the Mid-Market

Payroll in the US may be commoditized at the calculation layer, but differentiation happens in experience, integration, and intelligence.

HiBob’s payroll bet hinges on three ideas:

1. UX: embed payroll directly in HiBob’s already user-friendly workflows, making it seamless for both admins and employees.
2. Integration: unify all pre-processing inputs - comp raises, FP&A, benefits, time sheets - so payroll is the natural output of the HCM.
3. Intelligence: use AI to surface anomalies, contextualize payslips, and improve data quality across the HRIS.

Zehavi summed it up: “A smart HCM can make every payroll perform better. And the fact that all the information sits under one umbrella will create a huge unfair advantage for all-in-one players when it comes to AI.

”This is more than a faster paycheck. It’s about making payroll the foundation for better HR and finance decisions.

Measuring Success

How will HiBob know if this works?

• Adoption: dozens of customers are already live on the US payroll product, with more queued for implementation.
• Market traction: fewer disqualified deals in the US because of payroll gaps.
• Cultural alignment: payroll’s “zero tolerance” ethos is becoming part of HiBob’s organizational mindset.

But the ultimate test is whether HiBob can execute in a new domain that requires different skills & competencies.

If HiBob succeeds, it proves that a mid-market SaaS company can combine speed with precision. If it struggles, the risk isn’t just technical, it’s reputational.

Closing

Payroll forces precision, demands cultural change, and opens the door to finance leaders who hold sway over technology budgets.

The move reflects a broader trend: the mid-market is the key battleground in HR tech and as the competition heats up the pressure to innovate increases.

Companies like HiBob are proving that the space between SMB all-in-one tools and enterprise behemoths is fertile ground for reinvention.

For HiBob, payroll is a strategic statement: the future of HCM will be all-in-one, global-first, and built on the foundation of trust that only payroll can enforce.And, as someone who cheers for more innovation and optionality for our clients, I’ll be keeping a close eye on how this rollout unfolds.