Vishwanathan Arunachalam on What It Takes to Build Payroll That Matters

In payroll, trust isn’t optional—it’s everything.

Vishwanathan Arunachalam (Vish), CEO of Mercans’ Payroll & SaaS business, dives into what it takes to deliver zero-breach payroll at a global scale. From anonymized processing to in-country delivery, he explains how Mercans embeds privacy and control into every payslip, and why security must be engineered, not assumed.

You started as an entrepreneur, built a payroll product from scratch,  and eventually transitioned to Mercans. How has this journey influenced your decision-making as a CEO?

That journey—from entrepreneur to CEO of a payroll SaaS company—has influenced everything about how I operate today.

When you start by building a payroll product from scratch—no funding, no safety net—you’re forced to think in first principles. You’re not optimizing an existing system; you’re building the engine yourself. And once you’ve done that, you never really look at things the same way again. You start viewing every decision through the lens of product, profitability, and scalability, not as separate goals, but as a single rhythm.

So when I stepped into Mercans, I didn’t come in to "run operations." I came in thinking: How do we elevate this product? How do we build a SaaS engine that’s robust, intelligent, and scalable across geographies? I looked at everything—from architecture to onboarding, pricing to positioning—as a founder would. Not just what’s working today, but what needs to evolve to support the next 10x.

That mindset helped us pivot quickly from being seen as just a service provider to being recognized as a technology-led global payroll company. We invested in the product, embedded AI/ML for validations, and built a Gross-to-Net engine that could stand shoulder to shoulder with any global platform. But again, it wasn’t tech for tech’s sake—it was always rooted in functionality. That’s something I learned early: innovation only works when it’s built on a strong foundation.

Another thing that carried forward is how I make decisions on people and teams. I don’t just delegate; I transfer ownership. I’ve been that person hustling in a two-room office, handling everything from coding to client calls. So I deeply value those who take charge without waiting for a title. I empower them, back them, and build around them.

At the core, I still operate like a founder, just at a different scale now. The product matters. The customer experience matters. The P&L always matters. And when you lead with that clarity, you don’t get lost in noise. You build for impact.

So yes, the journey didn’t just shape my decision-making—it defined the operating system I use every single day as CEO of a payroll SaaS company.

Mercans emphasizes direct, in-country delivery over third-party networks. What advantages does this bring to service quality and client satisfaction?

Our decision at Mercans to prioritize direct, in-country delivery over third-party networks isn’t just about operational control—it’s about trust, accountability, and client peace of mind.

When you run payroll across multiple countries, data doesn’t just move, it travels. And with every hop between third-party providers, the risk of data breaches, misinterpretation of compliance, and exposure of sensitive PII goes up dramatically. That’s simply not acceptable in today’s environment, where data privacy is non-negotiable.

By owning the delivery end-to-end in-country, we eliminate those risks. We don’t pass your data through unknown layers or intermediaries. There’s no leakage, no handoffs, no ambiguity. Clients know exactly who is handling their data—our team, on our platform, in their jurisdiction. This model guarantees tighter compliance, cleaner audit trails, and most importantly, zero compromise on data integrity.

And this approach integrates directly with our Gross-to-Net payroll engine, which is a core differentiator in the industry. It’s not just about speed and accuracy; we’ve pushed the envelope further. We’re the first in the industry to introduce anonymous payroll processing, where sensitive employee details are masked throughout the processing cycle. This ensures true personally identifiable information (PII) protection even at the system level, an unprecedented step in payroll technology.

On top of that, we’ve embedded AI-driven anomaly detection directly into the engine. The system doesn’t just compute payroll, it understands patterns. If an input looks out of range, inconsistent, or unexpected, the engine flags it instantly. This prevents downstream errors and gives both our teams and our clients confidence in the numbers before they go live.

So when we say Mercans is different, this is what we mean: direct delivery, native compliance, built-in privacy, and intelligent automation—all in one platform. It’s not just payroll—it’s payroll reimagined for today’s global, digital-first world.

HR Blizz™ serves both SMBs and enterprise clients across industries. How does its architecture adapt to complex business needs and industry-specific nuances?

At Mercans, we’ve always believed that the strength of a payroll solution lies not just in what it does but in how it adapts. HR Blizz™ was built with that philosophy at its core.

Whether we’re working with fast-scaling SMBs or global enterprises operating across dozens of countries, the platform is designed to be modular, intelligent, and inherently flexible. We don’t rely on patchwork integrations or off-the-shelf templates. Instead, we’ve broken payroll down into core components—input ingestion, proration, calculation, compliance handling, and validation—that work together like a well-aligned system. This approach gives us the ability to layer complexity where needed, without slowing down the engine or compromising the user experience.

What this means in practice is that HR Blizz™ can absorb industry-specific logic, localization needs, and operational scale, whether you’re in retail, manufacturing, banking, or tech. We don’t force clients to adapt to our system; we built the system to adapt to them.

One of the most critical advantages is how we handle data privacy and security. The architecture ensures that PII remains within the client’s infrastructure, minimizing exposure and aligning with the strictest data protection standards. Our anonymized processing and AI-assisted validations take that even further, removing friction, reducing risk, and making payroll smarter and safer at scale.

The result is a platform that not only handles the complexity of multi-country payroll but embraces it. Clients see the impact in faster implementations, fewer errors, and the confidence that their payroll operations can scale without breaking.

Ultimately, HR Blizz™ isn’t just a tool—it’s a reflection of how we think about payroll technology: flexible by design, secure by architecture, and built to empower global businesses with precision and control.

Mercans has maintained a zero-breach record since its inception, a critical achievement when handling sensitive payroll data. What practices do you credit for this track record?

We work in one of the most sensitive corners of enterprise tech – payroll, where we deal with employee identities, compensation, tax data, and compliance-critical records. That means trust isn’t optional; it’s foundational. So from the beginning, we made a conscious decision to build privacy into the core of our platform, not as an afterthought but as a principle.

The first key is control. We don’t rely on third-party processors or fragmented delivery networks. Our direct, in-country delivery model ensures that client data never bounces between vendors or crosses unnecessary borders. This drastically reduces surface area for breaches and gives clients full visibility into where their data resides and who touches it.

Second, we designed our architecture to minimize exposure. Most platforms move sensitive data around as part of processing. We took a different path, ensuring that PII never leaves the client’s environment unless absolutely required. Even within our own system, we leverage anonymized processing so that payroll can be calculated without exposing personal identifiers. That’s a significant leap forward in both privacy and compliance, and it’s baked into our product, not layered on top of it.

Third, our platform is stateless by design. We don’t persist data unnecessarily, and we continuously audit every data movement, access point, and integration handshake. That kind of discipline requires investment and intentionality, but it’s what has kept us breach-free even while scaling globally.

And lastly, there’s culture. Security isn’t just the responsibility of IT. It’s embedded in our delivery teams, product roadmap, and leadership mindset. Everyone at Mercans is trained to treat data with the same level of care we’d expect if it were our own.

So when I say we’ve maintained a zero-breach record, it’s not a security badge; it’s a product outcome. And more importantly, it’s a promise to our clients that we’ll never compromise on trust, no matter how fast we grow or how complex the business gets.

Yes, we hold every major global certification — SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, 27701, 27017, 27018 — and we’ve been recognized for secure engineering excellence. But let’s be clear: compliance is a consequence of conviction. At Mercans, security isn’t a checkbox but a design philosophy. We didn’t chase certifications; they followed us.

When you’re processing 25M+ payslips annually across 160+ countries, what level of trust does that demand, not just from clients, but also from their employees?

It demands a level of trust that’s almost sacred. You're not just handling numbers—you’re handling life events. Rent payments. School fees. A parent’s medical bill. The emotional stakes tied to payroll are enormous. So when we process over 25 million payslips a year, what we’re really processing is 25 million moments of trust.

And this trust has to cascade. First, clients need to believe the system works, that it will run on time, every time, with precision. But more importantly, their employees, who don’t know who we are, must never have to know. In payroll, silence is success.

To earn that trust, we’ve architected our entire engine to run with a mindset of zero surprises. Inputs are validated with machine learning before they ever hit processing. Our in-country teams own delivery end-to-end — no third parties, no loose handovers. And because we separate data from identifiers and use anonymized processing, we’ve built a system where security isn’t an add-on but embedded by design.

Trust at this scale can’t be marketed. It has to be demonstrated — quietly, consistently, every single cycle.

In fast-paced client environments, how do you strike the right balance between quick implementation and watertight compliance?

You can’t bolt compliance onto speed. You have to bake it into speed.

At Mercans, our payroll architecture is built like a modern highway – multiple lanes for different types of traffic, guardrails built-in, and intelligent signals that anticipate issues before they arise. So when a fast-growing client needs to go live in 12 countries in 60 days, we don’t compromise compliance to gain speed — we scale because we’ve pre-embedded compliance at the core.

Our implementation model is powered by componentized, reusable logic, especially for local statutory rules. That means we’re not building from scratch every time. Think of it like a modular construction site. The foundation is already set, and we’re just assembling based on the client's blueprint.

And just as importantly, we own our delivery. No reliance on fragmented partner networks. That control is what gives us speed and peace of mind. Because at the end of the day, moving fast only matters if you’re moving right.

How do you incorporate feedback from vastly diverse client types into the product roadmap?

Great products aren’t built in boardrooms—they’re built in the field.

We serve everyone from fast-scaling startups to Fortune 50 giants, and what we’ve learned is that while their scale varies, the friction points often rhyme. So our job is to listen. Obsessively. We look for patterns across geographies, sectors, and use cases.

We’ve institutionalized a feedback loop across service delivery, success, and support. Every issue raised is tagged, tracked, and categorized, not just to solve it, but to learn from it. That insight feeds directly into our product and platform teams. In many ways, our roadmap isn’t just shaped by feedback but led by it.

But we also stay true to our architectural DNA. Instead of building one-off fixes, we invest in flexible layers — workflow engines, formula builders, input templates — so future feedback can be handled as configuration, not custom code.

What makes us different is that we don’t just take feedback seriously but make it systematic.

How are global expectations around payroll technology shifting? How is Mercans preparing to stay one step ahead?

The world is moving toward real-time everything, and payroll is no exception.

Businesses now expect payroll to be transparent, audit-friendly, API-first, and increasingly employee-visible. Employees expect visibility into their earnings, deductions, and net pay ahead of time. And regulators want automated, timely compliance without excuses.

At Mercans, we saw this early. That’s why we didn’t just build a platform; we built G2N Nova, the world’s first stateless, anonymized gross-to-net engine. It doesn’t rely on storing sensitive data, and it can calculate across 160+ countries without writing new code. That gives us three unfair advantages: speed, accuracy, and adaptability.

Looking forward, we believe payroll will intersect with fintech. Daily accruals. Real-time creditworthiness. Embedded financial products. But none of that is possible if your engine still runs like a monthly batch job from 1995.

So how are we staying ahead? By building for where the world is going, not where it is. Payroll won’t just be a function; it will be a financial heartbeat, embedded into every part of the enterprise stack. And we’re already building for that future.

Finally, Vish on payroll’s evolution and Mercans’ vision...

For a long time, payroll was dismissed as a back-office task — a necessary cost center, not a strategic asset. But we’ve always seen it differently. At Mercans, we believe payroll holds the pulse of the enterprise. It reflects performance, policy, compliance, and most importantly, people. And that makes it a strategic lever, not a passive process.

Our job isn’t just to process payslips. It’s to create systems that reflect fairness, transparency, and speed in how companies reward their people. We hyper-focus on payroll because we know that when it’s broken, trust is broken — but when it’s done right, it builds a culture of reliability and respect. That's what drives us.

We’ve seen firsthand how a real-time, intelligent, and compliant payroll system can change how global organizations operate — it reduces financial leakage, improves governance, and delivers insight that shapes better decisions. That’s why we built a platform that isn’t just reactive, but predictive. A system that doesn’t wait for errors, but flags them before they cause damage. That’s the promise of G2N Nova, and that’s the ethos behind HR Blizz.

To us, payroll is no longer a line item — it’s a live wire running through every function of a modern business. It impacts your brand, your people’s well-being, and your regulatory standing. That’s why we don’t treat it as an afterthought. We treat it as a mission.

In the end, our vision is clear: to shift payroll from the shadows of operations into the spotlight of strategy — where it belongs.