Rafal Andzejevski: Reshaping the Financial Services Industry

Rafal Andzejevski is an international entrepreneur and Founder and CEO at PayAlly, a financial services provider for businesses with global ambitions. He has extensive business experience across a range of sectors including real estate, logistics, and wholesale trade, and has established successful companies in London, Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia.

While leading these businesses which trade across international borders, he gained a deep understanding of the intricacies of cross-border trading, particularly when it comes to managing finances. He has become passionate about reshaping the financial services industry and transforming it into an environment that can support businesses of all sizes.

Tell me about PayAlly and your role at the company.

PayAlly is an electronic money institution that is all about flexibility, security, and reliability. We offer various financial services to corporate clients – everything from international payments to foreign exchange and futures. We’ve worked hard to become a trusted, well-established institution – our FCA license as well as our SWIFT and SEPA memberships were big steps in that journey.

My role at PayAlly is very hands on. I founded the company back in 2017, and I remain the main stakeholder in the company. I’m also the CEO and a board member, so I get to see the business from all angles while being heavily involved in its day-to-day operations.

How did you decide to become an entrepreneur?

I have always had an innate interest in entrepreneurship. Even as a child, I decided that I wanted to own a bank because I was fascinated by the idea of how money moves from one place to another – whenever I would go to the bank with my father, I would watch the tellers and customers interact, completely mesmerised by the process. I wanted to be a part of that.

I was lucky to have a father who was an entrepreneur and who could show me the ropes, but it also meant I saw the impacts of owning businesses on your family life. When you’re a founder and CEO, there’s no such thing as a standard 9-5 job. The hours can be crazy, so the whole family has to be on board.

A key lesson that I learned from my father was how hard you have to work to make something a success. It’s of course about how much time and effort you put into it, how much you dedicate yourself to your work, and your belief in your project. But it’s also about being strategic.

Throughout my business career, I’ve always been looking for opportunities that will provide the biggest rewards, then trying to capitalise on that. An exciting idea in a space that doesn’t need or want new ideas isn’t going to succeed no matter how hard you try. Equally, my father taught me that timing is everything. If you can capture the perfect moment, it will be much easier to find success. So it’s about marrying the chance for innovation, your personal interest, and the perfect timing with the chance for success.

Rafal Andzejevski, international entrepreneur and CEO at PayAlly. Photo from Rafal Andzejevski.

Why did you start PayAlly?

In my earlier companies, we did a lot of international trade through commodities, real estate, and logistics. At the time, the movement of cash across borders was slow and clunky, and there weren’t any alternatives that could improve this. There certainly weren’t any options that could do it as fast as we needed it to.

Because of that necessity, I decided to make something for myself that could complement my businesses. Then, we decided that instead of keeping it to ourselves, we should share the infrastructure and methodologies we were building. That’s how PayAlly was born.

Can you tell us more about your journey to the UK? Why did you decide to set up your business in London?

I first arrived in the UK from Lithuania when I was 16 years old. I knew I wanted to leave from the age of 14, but it took me those two years to find the right way to do it. My plan was to apply to a college to study A-Levels and take it from there – so that’s exactly what I did. It felt like my life as an adult started at that moment. Of course, I had my family’s support, but it was the first decision I’d truly made on my own, and that in itself was tremendously exciting.

At that time, I was very naïve. I knew that the UK was a fantastic country with lots of business opportunities, but I had no concept of how difficult it would be to live here on my own without my parents to look after me. I soon realised that I needed to make money to put food on the table.

My first jobs included working in a McDonald’s kitchen and working as a cleaner in a hotel. It very quickly made me appreciate what hard work was, but I knew I couldn’t stay working in those jobs for long. That experience pushed me to study harder and work harder so I could build a better future for myself.

After graduating from the Stockholm School of Economics, my first businesses were in commodities and real estate. I was able to apply everything I’d learned so far, and I was eventually able to set up Andzejevski Holding, which is a group of companies across diverse sectors including real estate, finance, logistics, and wholesale trade. Through that experience, I saw a huge gap in the market for personalised financial services. That’s what led me to establish PayAlly.

The choice to have London as PayAlly’s home was easy. London is, without a doubt, the world's financial services capital, and there are a few reasons for that. Its regulatory framework is particularly important, especially when you’re comparing it to countries like Lithuania.

Because London’s financial sector is so well established, it’s much more stable and rarely gets overhauled by new legislation – something that’s common in younger financial sectors that are still figuring out the direction to go in. Institutions like the FCA are another key reason we chose London. Its regulatory framework is emulated the world over, so it seemed like a no-brainer to stay here.

Plus, fintech’s European home is London, so it made perfect sense for a company like PayAlly to be a part of that. London has recently surpassed San Francisco and New York to become the world’s biggest centre for fintech investment, reinforcing London’s crown as the world’s financial services capital.

Do you think London will always be the hub of global finance? Do you see any threats to that on the horizon?

London’s reputation as the hub of global finance is definitely safe for the coming decades. There will be challenges, I’m sure, but it’s nothing that the city hasn’t overcome before. Brexit was one of those challenges, but it’s given the UK an opportunity to reset and lay down a regulatory framework that supports sustainable growth both in the sector as a whole and for fintech specifically.

One thing I do think London has to be wary of is the potential for a fintech bubble. There’s a lot of overreliance on venture capital in the fintech sector, and we’ve seen increasingly high valuations as VCs pump money into businesses and sell them at inflated prices. We need to remember that these huge valuations aren’t necessarily proof of a good company. All they show is that the company had a great pitch and was able to convince VCs to give them money.

That’s why I think that, in the long run, a drop in VC investment is actually a good thing for the sector. With less capital flowing into fintech, it forces companies to scale through organic growth and allows that natural selection to take place. The need for start-ups to build strong foundations is stronger in this kind of environment, particularly as we enter a period of economic uncertainty, but this should have always been the case.

But, overall, London has a lot of benefits on its side. Even its geographical position of being between Europe and the Americas gives London a huge advantage, and the use of the English language makes it a very logical option for a whole host of businesses.

What do you think is the key to a successful business?

Beyond hard work and an entrepreneurial spirit, the one thing I wish I had understood better when I started my businesses was the need for a good team. It’s non-negotiable.

Building up a team is the hardest task, in my opinion. If you have loyal people, but they’re not professional, that might work at the beginning. If you've got professional people who aren’t loyal, you’ll have a huge turnover of employees which is not sustainable long-term. So there always has to be a balance between loyalty and professionalism.

In an ideal world, all your team members will be smarter than you are. You want them to bring innovative and exciting ideas to the table rather than always following your lead – but this can be hard for businessmen who have huge egos thinking that they’re the smartest guy on the planet. And you should allow your staff to express those ideas without fear of being shut down or ignored. Your team members are often the most tapped into the market and understand the granular detail of your business – let them make decisions on topics they’re well-versed in.

And it’s essential for business owners to know that they can’t do everything. It might seem easy at the beginning, and it’s natural to feel protective of what you’ve built, but there will come a point where you’re harming your business by trying to do everything alone. You can be the face of the company. You can represent the company, but you cannot do everything.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes