A Fully Remote Company Grew 300 Percent Since 2023. Here's the Culture Playbook Behind It

Payabli's retention rate sits above 90 percent while the company tripled in size. The levers it pulled are specific — and replicable.

Written by Elena Brooks · Bureau Business · Jun 3, 2026

The Retention Number That Matters

Most companies that grow 300 percent in two years don't keep 90 percent of their people. Payabli, a fully remote payments infrastructure company, has done both — and the combination is worth examining closely.

Retention above 90 percent is notable in any context. At a company tripling in headcount, it's operationally significant. Rapid growth typically strains culture, dilutes institutional knowledge, and accelerates voluntary turnover. Payabli's numbers suggest its leadership has found a way to scale without the usual attrition tax.

What the Playbook Actually Includes

The mechanisms Payabli uses aren't novel in isolation. Biannual offsites, donation matching tied to disaster relief, and structured educational offerings are each common enough. What's less common is deploying all three with explicit retention intent in a fully distributed environment.

The offsites are the structural anchor. For remote teams, in-person gatherings aren't a luxury — they're the primary venue for the kind of relationship-building that makes people stay through hard quarters. Twice a year is a meaningful cadence: frequent enough to maintain continuity, infrequent enough to preserve the cost discipline that remote-first models are supposed to deliver.

The disaster relief donation matching is a different kind of signal. It tells employees that the company will respond when something goes wrong in their lives or communities — that the employment relationship has some texture beyond the transactional. That's a retention lever, even if it doesn't show up on a benefits summary.

Educational offerings serve a dual function: they build capability the company needs, and they give employees a reason to stay that isn't purely financial. People who are learning tend to be people who aren't looking.

The Accountability Question

The honest interrogation of any culture playbook is whether the numbers hold under pressure. A 90 percent retention rate during a growth phase is encouraging. The more revealing test is what happens when growth slows, when a funding environment tightens, or when the company faces its first significant layoff decision.

Payabli hasn't published data on compensation benchmarking, equity structure, or how its retention figure is calculated — whether it excludes performance-managed exits, for instance, matters. Those details would sharpen the picture considerably.

What the available evidence does support is this: the company made specific, recurring investments in the conditions that tend to produce retention, and the retention followed. That's a more credible causal story than most leadership teams offer.

What Operators Should Take From This

For founders and executives running distributed teams, Payabli's approach offers a few concrete reference points. First, in-person investment isn't optional for remote culture — it's the mechanism. Second, benefits that respond to employees' lives outside work carry disproportionate loyalty value. Third, learning programs are retention infrastructure, not HR overhead.

The 300 percent growth figure gets the headline. The 90 percent retention rate is the harder achievement — and the one with longer operational consequences.

Key takeaways

Payabli has maintained employee retention above 90 percent despite tripling in size since 2023.
Biannual offsites serve as the primary mechanism for building cohesion in a fully distributed workforce.
Disaster relief donation matching and educational benefits are positioned as retention tools, not just perks.
The company's growth rate makes its retention figure more significant — scaling fast typically accelerates attrition.
Remote-first companies that invest in structured, recurring in-person touchpoints appear better positioned to hold talent than those relying on culture by default.

FAQ

What is Payabli?

Payabli is a fully remote payments infrastructure company that has grown approximately 300 percent since 2023.

How has Payabli maintained high employee retention while growing rapidly?

Payabli attributes its retention rate above 90 percent to biannual in-person offsites, disaster relief donation matching, and structured educational programs designed to keep employees engaged and connected despite being fully distributed.

Why do biannual offsites matter for remote companies specifically?

For fully distributed teams, in-person gatherings are often the only venue for the relationship-building that drives long-term retention. A twice-yearly cadence provides enough continuity to maintain culture without eliminating the cost advantages of remote work.

Is a 90 percent retention rate unusual for a fast-growing company?

Yes. Rapid headcount growth typically accelerates voluntary attrition as culture dilutes and management bandwidth thins. Sustaining retention above 90 percent while tripling in size is a meaningful operational achievement.

What information would make Payabli's retention claim more verifiable?

Key details that would sharpen the picture include how retention is calculated (whether it excludes involuntary exits), compensation benchmarking data, and equity structure — all of which affect whether the retention figure reflects genuine employee satisfaction or other variables.