We’re thrilled to announce that Payapps has partnered with FIS, the representative body for the £10 billion finishes and interiors sector in the UK.
Looking after the interests of 10,000 businesses and 260,000 employees working within the sector, FIS exists to support its members to improve safety, minimise risk, enhance productivity and drive innovation.
FIS’s growing community of members is drawn from contractors, manufacturers and distributors operating in the interior fit-out and refurbishment business with a common aim of creating conditions the sector to thrive.
As such, FIS have long been a champion of fair payment in construction, working to help end cash retentions, unreasonable contractual clauses, and unfair payment practices – which makes a partnership with Payapps a natural one. Payapps is a market-leading, cloud-based software platform on a mission to modernise and digitise the construction payment process.
Payapps is already helping FIS members BW Interiors, along with other UK construction businesses like Robertson, O’Shea and Tomlinson to improve collaboration, increase visibility, and reduce payment-related risk.
Speaking at a recent Construction News forum on construction payment practices, FIS CEO Iain McIlwee framed the issue that the FIS and Payapps partnership is out to address, highlighting the complexity in the current payment processes:
“[Main Contractors] set up as many hoops as possible because as soon as you miss one, it saves them a bit of money,” he said. “It’s set up to drive prices down so that you don’t get your full variations.”
Commenting at the same event, FIS member and Payapps customer, Theo Riakiotakis of BW Interiors agreed, “I think trust is one of the key things. Cash is king and if you want somebody to go out and do their best for you, you need to treat them fairly and that includes paying them. There can be administrative things that get lost and that’s why automation for us is quite big.”
Ian McIlwe agreed,
“Transparency would undoubtedly help – there is very little sharing of information in construction, and the opportunities that come from the data that can be generated by things like Payapps are huge.”
Payapps UK chief operating officer Amanda Ismail believes that the transparency that comes through digital payment processes is key to achieving this level of trust and collaboration:
“Technological solutions like Payapps can help with these endemic cultural issues. It comes from feeling that there is trust in the workplace, and between one organisation and another. Where technology can help is that everything is out in the open and you know that nothing has been hidden from you. And if I’ve done something wrong – say, I haven’t filed a particular certificate – I’m told about it automatically. It takes all of that ‘I never got your email’ bit out of it.”
We look forward to working alongside FIS to deliver innovation, improvement, and transforming the payment processes for this critical sector of the construction industry.”
