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One culture. Five locations. Finally the same story.
Paysafe needed 3,300 employees across five global hubs to understand the same company story. Local facilitators were running the same onboarding differently — shaped by their function, their city, their interpretation. Here's what changed.
Paysafe × AhaPlay
How a global payments company unified onboarding across three continents
"We had one values deck but different interpretations at every hub. Each location was onboarding people into a slightly different version of Paysafe. We needed consistency without losing what makes each site unique."
Paysafe operates across five main hubs on three continents — from engineering in Sofia to commercial teams in London and Jacksonville. In theory, one culture. In practice, five. And the harder they tried to fix it, the more complex it became.
How They Got Here
Two attempts. Two partial solutions. Two new problems.
E-learning: scalable but hollow.
The first attempt was logical — a digital onboarding programme that every new hire could complete on their own schedule. Completion rates were high; it was mandatory onboarding after all. But the experience felt impersonal as a first touch with the company. Understanding was shallow, whatever was retained was filtered through personal assumption, and there was no moment where new hires actually discussed what the values meant or committed to anything together.
WHAT IT CREATED
Completed. Not understood. Not felt.
Local facilitators: personal, but fractured.
To fix the impersonal problem, Paysafe invested in local L&D — a facilitator at each hub running the same values workshop in person every month. The human connection returned. But three new problems emerged almost immediately. First, facilitators at each location shaped the sessions through the lens of their site's primary function — engineering hubs delivered culture through an engineering lens, sales offices through a commercial one. The same values deck. Five different stories. Second, running the same workshop monthly, with the same material, for every new cohort, started to feel routine — and that started being felt in the room. Third, and most significantly: new hires bonded with their office, not with the company. Location silos were being built from day one.
WHAT IT CREATED
Personal at the local level. Fragmented at the company level.
The Solution
A different kind of programme entirely.
Paysafe needed something that would deliver the same experience regardless of who was in the room or which continent they were on — without a facilitator, without functional bias, and without the monthly burden on L&D. But the most important requirement wasn't operational. It was cultural: new hires needed to form bonds with colleagues from other locations from the very first day. Not just understand the company values — but build the cross-location relationships that make a distributed company feel like one company.
WHAT THIS NEEDED TO DO
Consistent. Cross-location. No facilitation. Real commitment.
The Programme
One programme. Every hub. No two sessions filtered differently.
AhaPlay turned Paysafe's values deck into a structured team programme — the same sessions, the same discussion frameworks, the same commitment mechanisms, running simultaneously across every location. Without a facilitator in the room. And deliberately mixing new hires across locations in the same session, so the bonds formed during onboarding are cross-location from the start.
Cognitive Alignment
Every new hire builds the same understanding of what Paysafe's values actually mean in practice — not what their local manager assumes they mean, and not what their site's function emphasises. Defined together, from the source.
Motivational Alignment
New hires don't just hear the company story — they discuss it, challenge it, and connect it to their own role. The values stop being a slide deck and become something they've personally engaged with and committed to.
Behavioural Alignment
Teams agree on what the values look like in specific, everyday situations. Not as policy. As a shared commitment made with colleagues they'll work alongside — across locations, not just in their office.
+ The Cohort Effect
When new hires go through onboarding together — in mixed cross-location, cross-functional groups — something more valuable than bonding happens. They understand the company's values through multiple lenses at once. How engineering in Sofia interprets "customer obsession" is different from how sales in London or bizdev in Jacksonville does. Hearing those differences in the room, on day one, builds something no policy memo or cascade ever could: a genuinely holistic understanding of what the company means across its entire organisation.
These aren't just colleagues. They're the people who shaped each other's picture of Paysafe from the very start. That shared foundation doesn't fade after onboarding. It becomes the informal architecture that prevents the functional and geographical silos that quietly fragment distributed companies over time.
The Result
What changed.
This programme is currently live across Paysafe's five hubs. Full results will follow.
Consistent culture from day one.
Every new hire, regardless of location or function, receives the same experience — shaped by the company's values, not by whoever happens to be facilitating that month.
L&D freed from repetition.
No more running the same workshop every month at five locations. The platform handles scheduling, sessions, and tracking automatically — without anyone in the room.
Cross-location bonds from the start.
New hires are grouped in mixed cross-location cohorts. The relationships formed during onboarding span Sofia, London, Jacksonville, and beyond — reducing the location silos that had been building from day one.
Values understood, not just received.
The difference between reading a values deck and discussing it with colleagues — committing to what it means in practice — is the difference between information and alignment. This programme creates the latter.
The goal wasn't to replace local culture. It was to ensure that every new hire, wherever they joined, understood the same company — and felt part of the same community from day one.
Get Started
One programme. Every location. No facilitators needed.
We'll show you how to turn your values deck, culture document, or onboarding programme into a consistent team experience that runs across every location — with no facilitators and measurable proof that alignment is growing.
See how Merkle changed habits across 350+ people →
Proactive or Rogue?
The team agreed to take more initiative.