Paris-based
Rivage has closed a €2.6 million pre-seed funding round to support the rollout
of its payroll software across accounting firms. The round includes Partech,
alongside business angel investors from the technology and accounting sectors,
including the founders of Skello, Hexa, Quarksup, and Teledec.
More than half of
employees in France rely on accounting firms or outsourcing providers for
payroll and social security declarations. As a result, payroll software plays a
central role in a large market that remains largely dominated by legacy
systems, many of which are not fully aligned with the ongoing digital
transformation of firms and their small and medium-sized business clients.
In response to
these challenges, Rivage is developing an open, interoperable payroll software
platform designed to increase the productivity of payroll managers and position
payroll data as a tool for broader HR advisory services. The solution is
already being deployed across eight partner firms.
Founded in July
2025 by Ayoub Saidane, Hector Vergeron, Paul Lemoine, and Tancrède d’Hauteville
(CEO), Rivage aims to offer a modern, scalable alternative focused on
interoperability. The platform is designed to adapt to evolving regulatory
requirements at scale while reducing the administrative burden on payroll
managers through the automation of complex and time-consuming tasks.
In a segment that
has seen limited technological innovation, the company positions itself within
a market where advances in AI are creating new opportunities to improve
efficiency for firms.
Commenting on the
challenges facing the sector, Tancrède d’Hauteville said:
Between
the increasing complexity of regulatory frameworks, the accelerating
digitalisation of VSBs/SMBs and the suffocating monopoly imposed by legacy
solutions, payroll has become a major pain point for firms.
From
the outset, we built Rivage with our accounting partners, to enable them to
break out of this dependence, to gain long-term productivity and to be in line
with their customers’ demands.
The funding will
support two main priorities: continued development of the platform to improve
the efficiency and reliability of each stage of the payroll cycle, including
HRIS integrations, simplified advanced configuration, and enhanced auditability
of payroll and DSN calculations; and the expansion of collective agreement
coverage, with plans to broaden the number supported by the platform by the end
of the year.