EOR software enables borderless hiring
Matt Redler, co-founder and CEO of Panther, on building a modern employer of record
The shift to global talent turned payroll from a back office chore into a hiring bottleneck, which is why startups moved away from legacy systems. Once companies started hiring engineers, designers, and operators across borders, the old path of setting up a local entity, opening bank accounts, and stitching together lawyers, payroll vendors, and compliance workflows became too slow and expensive. Employer of record products won by turning that mess into software and a managed legal shell, so a startup could hire in a new country almost as easily as adding a domestic employee.
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The real driver was not just remote work, but a change in who companies were willing to hire for core roles. Global payroll tools made it practical to build core teams with international contractors or EOR employees from day 1, instead of waiting until the company was large enough to open foreign subsidiaries.
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Legacy payroll vendors were built for one country at a time. Global-first products bundled contracts, onboarding, tax forms, local compliance, and payouts into one workflow. That replaced spreadsheets, wire transfers, and outside counsel with a single system of record for an increasingly distributed team.
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The market then widened beyond niche EOR point solutions. Deel pushed from global hiring into a broader payroll stack, Rippling expanded EOR and contractor payroll inside a wider HR and IT suite, and Panther itself struggled as larger, better funded platforms bundled global payroll into a fuller product set.
From here, the category keeps moving toward one borderless people system that handles domestic payroll, international payroll, contractors, EOR, and adjacent HR workflows in one place. The winners will be the platforms that make global hiring feel routine, then use that foothold to own more of the company’s payroll, compliance, and workforce data stack.