Employment Hero & Akahu Partner To Ignite Rise Of Open Finance In New Zealand

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND: July 7, 2023 - Employment Hero - HR, payroll and employee engagement platform - has today partnered with Akahu, a New Zealand-run open finance platform, to allow accountants, bookkeepers, payroll bureaus and business owners in New Zealand to automate bulk bank payments to employees.

In New Zealand, many people have already experienced open finance through accounting software such as Xero, where bank accounts can be linked, and consent provided to automate the retrieval of transaction data. Users can also seamlessly connect financial accounts to other software applications, providing increased flexibility, digital activation, and significant time savings for internal payroll teams.

Now, Employment Hero’s integration with Akahu allows payments to be made directly within its payroll platform, saving time and reducing the need for manual bank file uploads through external systems. Employment Hero’s core platform reduces admin time by up to 80 percent.

Employment Hero’s partnership with Akahu offers businesses more transparency, greater choice, quicker payment times, and improved efficiency in their operations, drastically improving the payroll processing landscape on a macro level.

The privacy and security benefits are also significant; with trusted payment integrations like Akahu, employers will no longer need to provide bank credentials to staff, a process that is charged with processing payments.

“When it comes to banking and payroll, we know there is a huge gap between imitation and innovation. With previous legacy payroll systems, it was only possible to make payments by manually uploading bank files individually or using spreadsheets for data transfers. However, by partnering with Akahu as an open finance platform, we can now provide flexible payment options to all employees, which is ahead of the curve in the New Zealand market,” said Phil Bernie, Head of Product - Employment Hero.

There’s now a new wave of finance-enabled products in New Zealand, many of which are powered by Akahu. Offering speed, efficiency, and security when making payments from bank accounts, the partnership between Employment Hero and Akahu is the natural next step towards offering increased flexibility and choice for businesses when processing payroll.

“The Employment Hero product is truly world-class, and we're thrilled to support their growth in the New Zealand market. Being able to automate payroll payments is a huge upgrade in terms of security, accuracy, and time savings - and is a progressive step forward for New Zealand,” said Josh Daniell, CEO of Akahu.

"Bringing Akahu into Employment Hero's payroll product offering will truly take us to the next level in New Zealand. With this integration partnership, our users can benefit from broad, beautiful software that streamlines bank payments from a single place - without needing to jump out of the payroll platform in order to pay employees. The time saved and reduction of manual data handling will make the payroll process so easy for Kiwi businesses and we are very excited to roll these features out to the region,” added Phil.

Commenting on Employment Hero’s Akahu integration, Stuart Ruddell, CEO of JBM & Associates, said: “I really love how easy it was. The entire payroll process is done within the one app [Employment Hero Payroll], including paying staff - it’s just made payroll so simple, easy and quick.”

Open finance improves efficiency and productivity, with data flowing seamlessly through API calls and without manual intervention. By leveraging automation, payroll providers can save time on outgoing payments to their clients and their clients’ employees and improve accuracy if using an open finance payments platform that provides visibility over the status of outgoing payments.

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