Flytographer Shutters Workload from Global Payments

HQ Victoria BC, Canada
Customer Since 2016
Industry Online Services

“We can make hundreds of payments every week in five minutes, which enables our controller to do more high-value work. And as we add new cities and photographers globally, we don’t have to worry about compliance or tax issues. It’s built into Tipalti.”
—Nicole Smith, CEO and Founder

Recently ranked by a Canadian Business report as the fastest growing consumer services startup in Canada, Flytographer is your one-stop shop for a personal vacation photographer.

Offered on six continents, with more than 400 local photographers available in 200 cities worldwide.

For photographers working with Flytographer, they have a fully digital experience (outside of the actual photoshoots), including onboarding, communications, and payments. According to CEO and founder Nicole Smith: “Photographers don’t have to do any of the customer acquisition, marketing, or vetting. They get served up shoots and can opt in or opt out, all online. And once they provide a great photoshoot experience for the customers on location, we can pay them quickly.”

The lifeblood of Flytographer is its growing community of photographers and paying them quickly and efficiently within days of every photoshoot is vitally important.

“PayPal was our only solution for the first few years, and as we grew, we were spending several hours each week paying our photographers. It was manual work with a high potential for human error. And many photographers preferred other payment methods,” says Smith.

Flytographer implemented Tipalti and rapidly rolled out its new payments hub so photographers could now manage their payment details themselves, and new photographers could onboard themselves.

“With Tipalti, partner interaction no longer requires any bandwidth from our team,” says Smith. “Photographers can change bank accounts or switch payment methods between PayPal, ACH, or wire transfers — it’s all self-service.”

Even though the number of payments has doubled in the last year, making weekly payments to its photographer community has also been streamlined, eliminating 95% of the workload. “We can make hundreds of payments every week in five minutes, which enables our controller to do more high-value work,” says Smith. “And as we add new cities and photographers globally, we don’t have to worry about compliance or tax issues. It’s built into Tipalti.”

Another payoff is the ability to scale Flytographer’s sales channels of travel agents and partners, such as Expedia and Zola. “It used to take bandwidth and resources from our team. We were writing and mailing checks. Now that payments automation is built into our platform for partners, we are able to pay our partners faster, in their preferred method,” sums up Smith.