Autodesk Signs Definitive Agreement To Acquire Payapps For Global Payment And Compliance Management

JIM LYNCH, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Autodesk Construction Solutions

The construction industry is undergoing a much-needed and long-awaited digital transformation, evolving its paper-based ways of working into an approach where technology is deeply integrated into every stage of a construction project’s lifecycle.

In particular, the payment process is ripe for innovation: general contractors and subcontractors alike struggle with late payments and cash flow constraints on virtually every project. Late payments and non-payments are also a key contributor to many general contractors and subcontractors going bankrupt. Further, it can take an average of 83 days for subcontractors to get paid after putting work in place, and because of the risk, many will not bid on a project if a general contractor or an owner has a reputation for slow payments.

In a big step toward addressing the critical need for a more efficient, transparent, and compliant payment process, I’m excited to announce that Autodesk has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Payapps, a leading global provider of construction payment and compliance management solutions. The acquisition builds off the previous collaboration and strategic alignment between Payapps and Autodesk Construction Cloud, which we announced in 2022.

Known as Payapps in Australia, New Zealand, the U.K. and Ireland, and GCPay in North America, the company’s best-in-class cloud offerings accelerate visibility of payments between project stakeholders and have helped construction teams save nearly 350,000 project hours a year. In North America, Payapps’ GCPay solution also helps general contractors manage the lien waiver exchange process with their trade partners to speed up the payment process.

With this acquisition, Autodesk customers will benefit from leveraging technology that eases the burden of construction payment management in a process that is simpler, faster, and more efficient for all construction project stakeholders. The acquisition further reinforces our belief that how project teams build should be just as rewarding as what they built – and improving processes and workflows is paramount to improving the industry.

I recently caught up with Geoff Tarrant, executive chairman of Payapps, to discuss our shared goals. In that conversation, Geoff captured it well: “Payapps and Autodesk share a common mission of helping our customers increase profitability through cost efficiencies and reduce risks wherever possible. With Payapps becoming part of Autodesk, our customers will get to experience the technology benefits of both companies as we continue our journey to help construction companies improve their payment management processes.”

Reimagining the construction payment process

With our prospective entry into providing payment management solutions, we will be fulfilling a long-standing need in the construction industry that remains largely unanswered by other technology providers. By expanding the breadth of Autodesk Construction Cloud to include payment and compliance management, Autodesk will continue to build out an extensive Design and Make Platform and bring general contractors and subcontractors a new level of visibility during payment processes. With Payapps, it’s a challenge we’re well-positioned to resolve – and our customers agree.

Andy Burg, Vice President, Operations Technology Solutions, Messer Construction Co., an ENR top-100 general contractor with $1.4 billion in revenue, and mutual Autodesk and Payapps/GCPay customer shared, “Messer Construction has utilized GCPay for the past eight years to facilitate our subcontract pay request process. This user-friendly and intuitive application provided improved controls, data accuracy, and process efficiency, which were essential for our project teams and trade partners. Since standardizing on Autodesk Build nearly three years ago, we have continued streamlining project workflows across construction stakeholders. This acquisition will further enable us to simplify our workflows and improve the efficiency of project execution.”

Brett Mason, CEO of Built, another mutual customer and leading contractor in Australia, added, “We are excited by the combination of Payapps and Autodesk. Payapps has been an international success story in developing a market-leading construction payment application solution. The acquisition by Autodesk, a global leader in construction and design software, is highly complementary and further enhances and extends their best-in-class platform."

With payment and compliance management solutions integrated into Autodesk Construction Cloud, our construction customers, including general contractors and subcontractors, will be able to spend less time worrying about payment risk and the tedium of the payment cycles and more time focusing on growing their business.

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