Amsterdam’s PaymentGenes Is Working Towards A Transparent FinTech Industry

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Netherland based FinTech startup PaymentGenes acts as a consulting & recruiting agency including Worldpay as their client. Michael Tailleur, co-founder & General Manager talks business & company culture:

Describe PaymentGenes in 50 words or less.

PaymentGenes is the only global payments firm that offers both consultancy and recruitment services in the FinTech industry. We use our extensive knowledge and experience to offer companies crucial strategic advice on how to increase revenues and reduce unnecessary costs. We work with top industry clients and have proven successes in various global markets.

Amsterdam's PaymentGenes Is Working Towards A Transparent FinTech Industry

Michael Tailleur, co-founder

What is your role at the company and how did you get involved?

Serving as the co-founder and general manager of PaymentGenes, I oversee all of the processes and projects to ensure smooth business operations. Prior to PaymentGenes, I worked internationally for Deloitte, in Zurich and Frankfurt. While working at Deloitte, through mutual contacts, I was in contact with Jan Joost Kalff (Founder of PaymentGenes) who shared his business idea for a new company in FinTech. This concept ignited my decision to move back to the Netherlands and start-up PaymentGenes together with the other co-founders. I have believed in this concept since the very beginning and I am absolutely thrilled to see these ideas becoming a reality.

How did you discover the need for the consulting / recruitment agency? What problem are you solving?

PaymentGenes has very clear insights into the major issues companies currently face because we have been on the receiving end of the services we now offer. We understand the challenges our clients face by investigating and researching why those challenges exist.

For example, when we work with merchants, we analyse payments at a transaction level to shed clarity on the conversion rate figures. When we identify the reasons transactions are not successful, we provide suggestions to turn this around. We help our clients to adopt smarter, customer-friendly payment processes and ultimately increase conversion rates. Reviewing and implementing the right process has the potential to drastically increase firms’ income and that is where PaymentGenes is able to support companies along every step of the way. We provide our clients with brief informative feedback during our analysis so they know what we recom mend to fix, how and why.

On the recruitment side, our consultants have an excellent network of professionals in the industry, which enables us to provide our clients with the best possible matches in a short timeframe. Helping companies with different projects enables us to familiarise ourselves quickly and efficiently with them in order to match the best people to expand their teams. This also allows us to familiarise ourselves with each clients’ culture and needs, ultimately saving time and effort in finding “new stars”.

The payment and FinTech industry is growing strong with new startups emerging every day. What’s unique about PaymentGenes?

We founded PaymentGenes using the knowledge and experience we gained from years of working with the most innovative international companies. We come from different backgrounds in the payments industry and shared the passion to start our own firm and put our knowledge into practice. We are now able to provide our clients with unique insights into online payments, increasing conversions and reducing costs. We work hard to do and be the best we can.

You are also planning to create an investments department, could you share something about this?

This is something I am quite excited about. We want to be able to take our extensive knowledge and invest it in companies in order to help them grow. Our experience has taught us what formulas and processes are needed to build successful startups within the FinTech / payments industry and how to overcome different challenges along the way. We hope to get it up and running in the near future alongside other big plans my co-founders and I have for PaymentGenes. You can say that this is definitely a very exciting time for us!

What were the biggest challenges you faced?

When we were just starting up, we had to expand our network of contacts. It took some time before we built up the solid network that we have today. We put in many long days and nights to build the foundation for what PaymentGenes is today and I would be lying if I said sometimes it wasn’t scary. It’s incredibly rewarding, however, to see how the original concept had turned out, and we are now able to provide new solutions and fulfill the needs of the industry.

Amsterdam's PaymentGenes Is Working Towards A Transparent FinTech IndustryCompany culture is a main topic among startups. What does yours look like? What’s your focus for team members?

PaymentGenes is a young and energetic company. We hold our employees to high standards and give them many responsibilities. However, we develop very clear goals with our team members and provide them with guidance every step of the way. We like to give them the freedom to prioritise their work themselves and listen to them when they face a challenge or have an idea about how to do something better or differently. We enjoy a relaxed environment in the office and often make each other laugh! On Fridays, we like to grab a drink in the afternoon to wrap up the week nicely. It is important to me that our team feels at ease when they come to work and that they see their colleagues as more than just professional acquaintances.

Team members have the opportunity to become team leaders if they perform well and have the right motivation. They can also transition into our consultancy department and be given management responsibilities. Our company culture is quite dynamic.

Why would a talent join your team?

When people join our team they benefit on a number of levels. First, we offer our team a very supportive professional environment by holding weekly trainings and guidance sessions. During which we carry out simulations and encourage them to look at every challenge as an opportunity. We motivate them to imagine the end-goal and to work hard along the way until they reach it. Second, it is important to me that they see it as their success and not only the company’s. So when they make a placement, they personally experience how it feels to give someone’s career a boost. You literally change this person’s life and that feeling is the biggest reward in the whole process. It’s those moments that we really like to celebrate together.

What do you look for in team members?

When I meet new candidates that are interested to work at PaymentGenes, I am always curious to hear what their motivation is for working in payments. I want to know what sort of challenges they have experienced in previous jobs, how they overcame them, and what they have learned. In the end, it is important that people who work here have the ambition to grow and develop themselves and the desire to know the ins-and-outs of the payments industry.

What was your most memorable moment so far?

I remember when the first group of payment consultants we hired started working for us. That was probably the first time I realized that what Jan Joost, Bram (our other co-founder), and I had in mind was becoming a reality.

Another moment I remember quite fondly is running a quick scan for one of the largest travel agencies in the world. A quick scan is a service PaymentGenes offers where we run an initial test within a company’s structure to identify hidden causes of conversion loses. By doing so, we managed to increase their overall conversion rate by 15%. That was huge!

7 years from now: How did PaymentGenes change the world?

I’d like to think that we have managed to make the payments industry more transparent. On the consultancy side, we will have revolutionised the way companies offer the whole customer payment experience for both the merchants and the financial institutions.

The recruitment side or “human capital” as I like to call it is the most important asset of a company. Individuals are vital to making positive changes and taking a company to the next level. One of our main goals is to provide our clients with such game-changing individuals, while making the term “recruitment” less of a dirty word and more of a positive challenge that benefits all parties involved.

What advice would you give fellow founders for their startup?

When you just start-up with an idea you have in mind, you need to believe in what you are offering customers and be confident that you will succeed. It is important to create a full strategic plan dealing with aspects such as sales and marketing that will determine your profit.

I would also suggest to start a business with complementary partners that have different qualities than you. That way, together you form a complete team that is able to tap into different aspects of the company.

 

 

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