About Cadana | Learn about The Cadana Story

Cadana powers embedded payroll and payments infrastructure for global staffing firms, freelancer marketplaces, and international HR platforms.

At Cadana, we believe that geography should never hinder the ability for talent to thrive. Our raison d'etre is to dismantle all barriers to financial success for talent everywhere, starting in emerging markets.

We're fundamentally creating a new type of compensation infrastructure that puts its core focus on the needs of hard working PEOPLE.

Our platform enables customers like Andela, Listo Global, and Cloudfactory to launch branded global payroll, real-time payouts, and tax automation across 100+ countries—without building from scratch. Most of our customers go live in under 6 weeks via white-label or API integration.

Cadana transforms back-office complexity into competitive advantage.

Our revenue-sharing model turns infrastructure into a profit center, while built-in compliance keeps our partners local—everywhere they operate.

Cadana is backed by Better Tomorrow Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Broadhaven, and 500 Global, with $7.4M raised to date.

$1b+

in annualized payment volume by 2025

90%

of payments are delivered in under 5 minutes

$125k+

in average annual savings per customer

400hrs

saved per year per customer in talent operations time

100+

Employment Tax Jurisdictions

The Cadana Story

Beginnings in Grinnell

Albert and Ameer's journey began on the first day of college in Grinnell, Iowa. Hailing from Ghana and Pakistan respectively, they were both thrilled to seize the opportunity of a U.S. education. They quickly discovered that they would be the only double majors in Physics and Computer Science in their class, a shared pursuit that solidified their friendship and mutual respect.

Professional Growth

After graduating, they were fortunate to gain experience at some of the world's largest corporations and fastest-growing startups. In 2021, while reflecting on their journey in their NYC apartment, they decided to embark on a new venture: Cadana.

A Personal Mission

Starting Cadana was deeply personal. While they had lived their version of the American dream, they couldn't ignore the millions of brilliant individuals around the world who lacked similar opportunities. Even those who secured remote work faced challenges with inefficient payment infrastructures that delayed their earnings and restricted their financial potential. They recognized that while talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is not. Cadana was born to bridge this gap.

Innovating for Impact

Cadana's first innovation was the creation of the earned-wage-access infrastructure for emerging markets, allowing workers to access their wages early instead of waiting until the end of the month. We then developed cross-border payroll software, automating payments and compliance across 30+ countries in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Today, we have expanded this infrastructure to empower other platforms to effortlessly build global payroll solutions. Cadana is the world's first default-global payroll API for hiring platforms.

A Vision for the Future

Our platform has facilitated over $150 million in transactions for workers in emerging markets, serving customers that include the world's largest talent marketplace for software engineers. This is just the beginning. We are rearchitecting global payroll to create a modern, dignified, and equitable pay experience for hundreds of millions of workers worldwide.

Meet our founders

Albert Owusu-Asare

co-founder &CEO

Previously Albert was the Chief Technology Officer of a $1 billion valued property-tech start-up, where he helped grow the company and built critical infrastructure that continues to support the business.

Albert started his career on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs in the consumer banking division (Marcus). Throughout his time at Goldman Sachs, Albert engineered critical financial platforms that supported Marcus including lending, savings, and a credit card offering for millions of Americans.

Ameer Shujjah

co-founder & PRESIDENT

Previously, Ameer was an engineering lead at Amazon where he led a team of engineers, data scientists, and business analysts to drive improvements in the search ecosystem.

Ameer started his career on Wall Street at Deutsche Bank. At Deutsche Bank Ameer performed evaluations of FinTech startups by quickly prototyping their technologies and assessing synergies with business groups within the global firm.

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