PaySauce has appointed former Xero executives Chris Ridd and Mel Shortland-Power to lead its expansion in Australia, following an AUD $4 million capital raise led by Artemis Capital.
Ridd, former Managing Director of Xero Australia, joins as Executive Director. Shortland-Power, who previously served as Xero's Head of Bookkeeping and Global Head of Partner Community, becomes Go-To-Market Lead.
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Asantha Wijeyeratne has relocated from New Zealand to Melbourne to oversee the Australian push. The appointments form part of a broader effort to sell PaySauce's payroll software to Australian micro-businesses.
PaySauce has built its business in New Zealand over the past decade. The platform now processes NZD $200 million in payroll each month for more than 8,500 customers and recorded a 12% year-on-year increase in processing fees in the quarter to March 2026.
At the end of March, annualised recurring revenue stood at NZD $8.9 million, including interest earned on customer funds in New Zealand.
Australian push
The expansion targets a segment of the market that often lacks dedicated payroll resources. PaySauce cited 694,000 Australian micro-businesses employing between one and four people, many of which still manage payroll manually.
That leaves owners to deal with award rates, penalty rates, superannuation rules and Fair Work obligations themselves. Errors can lead to underpayment claims and back-pay liabilities, an issue that has become more prominent as payroll compliance faces greater regulatory and public scrutiny in Australia.
PaySauce's product is designed to let employers run payroll from a mobile phone, with award calculations, tax, superannuation and compliance reporting handled automatically. In Australia, the company is also using the New Payments Platform to support near-real-time wage payments.
Another regulatory change is likely to increase demand for payroll software. Under Payday Super rules, Australian employers will be required to pay superannuation contributions at the same time as regular pay runs from 1 July 2026.
For smaller employers, that means payroll processes that already involve complex award interpretation will become more demanding. PaySauce says its system is set up to manage that requirement automatically.
Sector focus
PaySauce says it has seen early traction in the Australian dairy sector and is now extending its system to cover complex retail and hospitality awards. It added that award interpretation rules have been reviewed by the Australian Payroll Association, of which it is an Industry Partner.
Wijeyeratne has worked in payroll for three decades and previously built two payroll businesses, including one that was later sold. Commenting on the appointments, he linked the new hires to PaySauce's effort to replicate its New Zealand growth in a larger market.
"Chris and Mel both bring to PaySauce a passion for helping fast-growing companies to achieve their potential. They have a record of success and a deep understanding of what is required to take a New Zealand company from a start-up to being a trans-Tasman leader. We have spent a decade proving this model works in New Zealand. This raise is the fuel that lets us take everything we have learned and apply it at Australian scale, backed by a team that has successfully navigated this path before," said Asantha Wijeyeratne, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, PaySauce.
He also highlighted the compliance burden facing very small employers. "For Australia's microbusiness owners, navigating award obligations, penalty rates, and the distinctions between different types of work such as stock feeding versus milking shifts on a dairy farm is the kind of complexity that derails small operators who are already stretched thin. Many are still managing payroll manually, leaving them exposed to Fair Work breaches that can result in significant back-pay liabilities," he said.
Ridd said his experience at Xero showed the value of making compliance easier for small businesses. "I have seen first-hand what it takes to build a product that small business owners genuinely trust and rely on. When I was at Xero, we gamified accounting to turn tedious compliance tasks into something that was fun and simple. PaySauce has done exactly that with payroll. The Australian market has nearly 700,000 micro-businesses that are underserved, often managing one of their most complex obligations on a spreadsheet. That is a real problem with real consequences, and PaySauce solves it in a way that actually makes it easy for a business owner who is flat out running their operation. I am excited to be part of bringing that to Australia," he said.
Shortland-Power said the timing of the company's Australian launch aligned with rising compliance demands on small employers. "Small business owners do not wake up wanting to think about payroll. They want to focus on their customers, their team, and growing what they have built. My time at Xero taught me that the most powerful thing a software company can do is take something genuinely complicated off a business owner's plate and make it invisible. PaySauce does that for payday. With Payday Super coming in July, the compliance burden on micro-businesses is only getting heavier. The timing of this launch could not be more important, and I am proud to be joining a team that is already proven and ready to scale," she said.