Dr. Tschangiz Scheybani of Payreto Services Inc. Shares with Us How a Strong Corporate Culture can Propel your Business in the Right Direction

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Dr. Tschangiz Scheybani: We’re all safe and healthy. Thank you for asking.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Payreto Services Inc.

Dr. Tschangiz Scheybani: I have worked in various segments of the FinTech/payment industry for the past 23 years after finishing my Ph.D. thesis in Applied Physics (Biophysics) in 1995 at the Technical University Munich and Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry (Munich).

Since 1998, I held various leadership positions at WorldPay (Munich/London) and Giesecke & Devrient (Munich) before taking over the role as CEO & Co-Investor in 2006 to 2008 of Payment Processing Corporation (PPC) in the Philippines. After disengaging from my previous business as co-investor, I became the Managing Director for a leading payment gateway vendor, PAY.ON with its newly established entities in Hong Kong and Manila from 2009 to 2014.

In 2011, I built a partnership with the executives of PAY.ON AG to establish a separate Back Office Support Services company named Payreto Ltd. (HK) with its subsidiary Payreto Services Inc. (Makati City, Philippines) to fill service gaps of PAY.ON’s pure technology approach. This unique FinTech Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company started with seven staff only. Today, the operational Headquarters Payreto Services Inc. currently employs over 100+ staff.

How does Payreto Services Inc innovate?

Dr. Tschangiz Scheybani: In general, Payreto innovates very much by listening to various client segments and new client prospects to address their specific as well as joint needs. As soon as these needs are spotted, our team will structure them in a way that allows us to build a service segmentation and create solution packages that are tailored to the client’s anticipated growth path with a billing model that is customized to their needs. Our team is always mindful of process improvements as well as building infrastructure to perform our services better. We are constantly looking for software that would complement our service packages. In recent months, we have explored using automation tools allowing Payreto to provide a more modern (i.e., a less skilled staff-intense) service that is compatible with each client’s specific tools ecosystem. 

How the coronavirus pandemic affect your business, and how are you coping?

Dr. Tschangiz Scheybani: At the beginning of lockdowns and other restrictions, our business continuity plan was tested, and we had to be more agile than ever. Because we always prioritize the safety of our employees, our entire workforce has to work remotely. Despite our physical offices being shut down, our work-from-home team still continues to deliver world-class service to our clients and fulfill our commitment to helping them scale their business. This is as a result of developing over the years a culture of strong internal collaboration and commitment to deliver quality service to our clients. 

To help our team cope with the crisis, we even held our first-ever virtual town hall to provide updates about the company and upcoming employee engagement activities. We’ve launched new programs and initiatives to support our team members. We’ve also kept the tradition of recognizing and rewarding employees who’ve contributed to the company’s growth and success. In summary, we are performing much better than expected in this pandemic. The fact that the global business community started to get much more used to video communication on all management levels tools brings us in many ways much closer to our clients and prospects compared to the pre-pandemic period.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Dr. Tschangiz Scheybani: There were no difficult choices for me, and most of the managers because we experienced a strong increase in business. Only on the recruitment side, we had to learn to hire staff without meeting the applicants face to face.

The fact that all colleagues are working from home allowed me and my colleagues to have very focused and often even more efficient 1-1 conversations. On the other hand, Payreto management also started to miss face-to-face meetings, especially with newly hired team members, to explain the Payreto-specific company culture more authentically.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety?

Dr. Tschangiz Scheybani: I usually exercise at home, watch golf videos, and occasionally go on golfing in a controlled COVID free environment to deal with stress. Thankfully, because of the success of Payreto, even in this pandemic, I don’t experience much anxiety on the business side. If we were in a different situation, I would imagine that instead of experiencing anxiety, I would work more on finding solutions to how the business could succeed. 

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Dr. Tschangiz Scheybani: We have, in principle, a lot of competitors on the BPO side of our business, especially in the Philippines, where the industry is consistently growing over the years. We have always distinguished ourselves as a unique company to focus on Financial Service Providers (FSP) (i.e., more on a niche market like Payment Service Providers, Acquiring Banks, Remittance Providers, FinTech Vendors, Cryptocurrency Issuers, etc.). By focusing on this sector, we’re able to achieve deeper depth in our offerings and assure our clients of the growing expertise of the Payreto team that they could benefit from. We will consistently meet the needs and deliver outstanding and personalized service to the FSP market segment.

Your final thoughts?

Dr. Tschangiz Scheybani: We offer a quite uniquely broad scope of solutions and services to the Financial Service industry. With the help of our technology vendor partners, you can contact us at welcome@payreto.com. We’re excited to hear your needs and requirements.

Your website?

www.payreto.com