Fidel API is a global fintech on a mission to help developers build innovative, programmable payment experiences on top of any payment card.

It’s been an exciting journey over the last few years for Fidel API. Since 2020, the team has grown by over 250% and currently has offices in London, Lisbon and New York, as well as remote employees globally. With plans to double headcount in the coming year, the talent team realised they needed a more scalable people management and onboarding solution.

Talent Manager Beatriz Lourenço knew that Fidel API needed a new HRIS solution to manage this phase of rapid growth, onboard new employees at scale, and create visibility on processes for the entire organisation. Beatriz explains what she was looking for in a new tool — and why Humaans was the perfect fit.

Humaans makes everything visible to everyone — this transparency is much more aligned with what we want to do as an organisation.

— Beatriz Lourenço, Talent Manager, Fidel API

Fidel API at a glance

Headquarters: London, UK
Additional office locations: Lisbon, New York and remote employees globally, with 25+ employee nationalities
Sector: Financial services
HR tech stack: Humaans, Greenhouse, Zinc, Notion, Jira, Qulture.Rocks, DocuSign

Key results

2 days to implement Humaans
66% reduction in admin time
Improved whole-organisation visibility and transparency over processes

Navigating siloed, manual people processes amid rapid organisational growth

“When I joined Fidel API, we were a much smaller team,” Beatriz says. “We already had an HRIS, but it felt more like a database. The unintuitive design made it hard to find things, often focusing us to export our data to a spreadsheet to report on our metrics. It didn’t integrate with any of our existing platforms, either — it felt like it was stuck in time.”

As the team grew 4x over the course of 18 months, Beatriz was spending 30% of her time managing the admin load for new joiners and people processes.

“My team was becoming frustrated and overburdened — and nobody likes to see their team unhappy,” she explains. “I realised that we needed to find a new solution that was more scalable.”

These frustrations weren’t just negatively impacting Beatriz and her team — they were also impacting the onboarding experience for new joiners. Up until this point, a lot of the talent processes at Fidel API were siloed and manual. This created inconsistencies by relying too heavily on individual managers knowing where to find specific materials, which was no easy feat if they were new to the company themselves.

My team was becoming frustrated and overburdened. Our new joiners weren’t getting a great onboarding experience. I realised we needed to find a new solution that was more scalable.

“I spent a lot of time calling managers and explaining the onboarding process. We realised that some of our new joiners weren’t getting the same information, or a great onboarding experience. We wanted to make sure that everyone who joins us knows Fidel API inside and out to set them up for success. The only way to do that was to make sure we had a process that worked for everyone.”

The case for an all-together HRIS with best-in-class integrations to build people processes at scale

When evaluating a new solution, Beatriz needed something that integrated seamlessly with best-in-breed tools on the market, connecting data across the entire employee lifecycle with real-time analytics and insights.

“Our previous solution prevented us from having complete visibility over employee data across all of our platforms,” Beatriz says. “That made it hard to get a snapshot of how our organisation looked. We needed a single source of truth that could connect everything in one place.”

“We looked at a variety of solutions,” she adds. “We chose Humaans because it allows us to build a custom tech stack of specialised HR tools. Humaans integrates the best of everything together in one platform.”

Switching to Humaans meant Beatriz could scale up her processes more quickly, and unlock the full value of her people data.

We chose Humaans because it allows us to build a custom tech stack of specialised HR tools. Humaans integrates the best of everything together in one platform.

Implementation was a breeze, and Fidel API was set up and ready to go within two days. But the real test, Beatriz says, was in how readily Fidel API’s growing team adapted to the new tool — and Humaans passed with flying colours.

“I found it easy to start using Humaans immediately — adoption was smooth and intuitive. For our employees, I sent out an initial kick-off email highlighting the benefits and how to get started. The feedback has been positive — many team members have sent messages saying how much better it is.”

Driving transparency and visibility across the whole organisation

Humaans has become an essential part of Fidel API’s HR ecosystem, enabling them to centralise their people data, ramp new employees at scale, and act on powerful insights and analytics.

“Humaans automatically calculates all the key people analytics on our growth for me — like joiners, leavers and turnover rate. It’s also really easy to see how much PTO people are taking, and make sure we’re supporting our employee wellbeing.

“I really love the fact that I can see our gender balance and pay gap. I can drill down into our data by department and see the gender distribution. This gives us a clear picture of how our organisation looks right now, and what we need to focus on for our hiring OKRs.”

Humaans has made my job so much easier. It’s a 10/10 experience — I’d recommend it to anyone.

This increased visibility has been essential for informing Fidel API’s future hiring strategy and people processes. But it’s also trickled down to the rest of the organisation, right from the C-suite to the finance team and individual contributors — and that means Beatriz has seen a drastic reduction in her time spent doing administrative tasks.

“Our senior leaders used to depend on me to export, analyse, and format the data so I could show them where our hiring processes were headed,” Beatriz says. “But now, they can just go straight into the Humaans platform and get a high-level overview of how we’re doing as a company.

“Our finance team can use it to get an oversight of employee salaries during end-of-year reviews. Our workflows make onboarding a great experience for new joiners and managers. All our information is centralised in one place. People know exactly where to go, and what to do.

“Humaans makes everything visible to everyone — it’s so much more transparent and aligned with what we want to do as an organisation. It’s taken away extra work and makes my job so much easier. Humaans is a 10/10 experience — I’d recommend it to anyone.”

Simplify your people operations today. Book a free demo to learn how.

Josh Ash

Partnerships at Humaans