Strength in numbers
How Payrix helped the industry-leading gym management platform lift revenue and scale with ease
Perfect Gym software has humble beginnings as a booking system two university students in Poland developed for their martial arts teacher. But within five years, it grew and expanded its SaaS offerings to become the gym management software of choice for several well-known chains, in more than a dozen countries throughout Europe. Now, they service a variety of multi-location and national fitness chains, across Leisure, Aquatics, Recreation, Fitness, and Health.
Today, Perfect Gym is the industry leader in more than 50 countries. They’re pioneers in gym management software innovation, cultivating the newest fitness trends and advances and turning them into actionable tools that drive success for customers.
The expansion of Perfect Gym down under is the focus of this particular transformation story. Matt Inglis, Perfect Gym Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand, was kind enough to be our spotter and expert on his company’s payments journey.
The power of partnership
To begin operating in Australia and New Zealand, one of Matt’s top priorities was to find an integrated payments partner that aligned with Perfect Gym’s customer-first approach. He said a key part of their offering is providing an exceptional, seamless, fully branded experience for users. In a true end-to-end approach, they take great care to meet the needs of gym staff using the software as much as gym customers making payments and utilizing their memberships.
The search proved difficult for a couple of reasons. First, Matt explained there was a lot of immaturity in the market at the time in terms of customer- and mobile-first offerings. That goes for decent payment technology as well. Many vendors in the market didn’t offer payments via SMS or online and other important capabilities right out-of-the-box. “I also found they (other vendors) didn’t provide a good single point of contact. They would have multiple different people reach out with no real knowledge of what Perfect Gym did or how they could help us.” He added that it was obvious their lack of customer-first approach in the sales process meant they didn’t share the same values. “There was a big gap there,” Matt said.
The second challenge Matt faced was that he wanted a partner that could not only provide the best platform, but who could also help him navigate the payments ecosystem and build a strategy that met Perfect Gym’s goals, not the other way around.
Then he found Payrix and quickly realized there really was no contest.
“They’re engineers who can also address business strategy. They talked us through how we could utilize their API for payments, both from a technical aspect and from a business perspective. It was perfect.” Matt said.
From Matt’s previous experience in partnering with other payment providers, he had a clear vision of what he wanted in a partner. “There were a few things that I knew that I had to have. One was the technology had to stack up. Another was that the support also had to stack up, along with the treatment of customer data and the way in which the third-party would treat our customers. It had to be as good as how I wanted to treat our customers. Payrix was the only payments provider that ticked all the boxes. It’s a company that thinks the same way about how we can do business in the industry. And they back it up with technology and proof of execution.”
Hitting the ground running
In addition to sharing the same values, it was the power and ease of the Payrix Integrated API that ultimately tipped the scale for Perfect Gym. They had experience integrating 30-40 other payments providers from around the world, and Payrix proved to be one of the easiest and most reliable across the board.
“We recognized the Payrix API as best in class. It was also super appealing that we could have one, single integration for multiple countries. It saved us a lot of time and work, and we knew it was an integration that would support our goals well into the future,” Matt said. “It was a great choice for us, because it’s given us the confidence to scale even further.”
He explained that in the first year with Payrix, Perfect Gym processed 30,000 transactions. Five years in and they’re up to processing 10 and half times as many transactions, each month. That’s a growth of over 12,600%!
“There’s a wealth of knowledge and support at Payrix. From the integration process to helping sell payments to our customers, it’s made all the difference for us,” Matt said. “In the early years, I made sure to stay in the office on debit days in case there were any problems. I don’t think about debit days anymore. So I think that’s a true indicator of the success of the partnership and choice we made. Now I can walk into a meeting with a prospective customer and say with confidence we can take them on. And for them, the experience we provide will be seamless.”
