At Bloccpay, we talk a lot about “customer obsession” and “doing the unscalable things.” But sometimes, those aren’t just nice phrases for a pitch deck; they look like a real person with a real problem and a choice about whether to go back to sleep or jump on a Google Meet at 3am.
This is the story of one late-night payroll run that taught us something critical about how teams actually work.
The Message That Started It
The notification came in late on December 2nd.
A company in our pipeline was getting ready to run their first payroll on Bloccpay. They were excited to move away from manual payroll process to a fully automated, multi-chain, stablecoin-powered system. Everything was configured. They were ready to go.
There was just one problem.
They needed to process payroll for November, the month that had just ended. And they needed to do it now, because their freelancers were already asking about payment.
Bloccpay, at that moment, only supported payroll for future dates. Our system assumed you'd schedule everything ahead of time.
Their message was straightforward:
"We'll just run November manually and start using Bloccpay in December."
From a purely operational standpoint, that was acceptable. But from a customer obsession and product learning perspective, it felt like a missed opportunity.
The 3am Decision
It was 3am where we were. 8pm in São Paulo, where the customer was based.
If we said "sounds good, see you next month," no one would blame us. We could deal with this edge case later.
But this wasn't really about one month of payroll.
This was their first payroll interaction with us as a product. If we punted on their immediate need, what would that tell them about who we are? More importantly, what would we miss learning about how teams actually use payroll systems?
We sent a message back:
"Would you be open to jumping on a quick call? We might be able to help you run November tonight."
They replied within minutes: "Absolutely."
What We Built at 3am
The call started with us asking questions and them walking us through exactly what they needed.
The situation was more urgent than we'd realized:
- They had freelancers in Nigeria waiting for November payments
- Their previous manual system was a nightmare of spreadsheets and individual transfers that came with headaches
- Waiting to do future payroll meant going back to that nightmare for November cycle
The constraints were clear:
- November payroll needed to process tonight
- Our system didn't support backdated runs
So we did what early-stage teams do best: we hacked a solution live. It wasn't pretty, but it worked.
By the end of the call:
- Their November payroll was successfully processed on Bloccpay.
- They were set up to run December and beyond in a smooth, automated way.
- We had learned something important about how teams run payroll.
The Insight: Payroll Can Be Messy
That one call surfaced a critical insight:
Some companies don’t run payroll on neat, future-aligned schedules. They pay freelancers later than planned.
Our assumption had quietly been:
“Payroll is always scheduled ahead of time, and runs on future dates.”
Reality told us something different:
- Teams sometimes fall behind on approvals
- Sometimes, people just get busy
- Teams migrating from one payroll system to another need to process historical payments
That meant one thing:
Backdated payroll wasn’t an edge case; it was a real need.
From Call to Roadmap
That single late-night call turned into three tangible outcomes:
- A clearer understanding of reality: We saw firsthand how teams were using Bloccpay and where our assumptions about “future-only” payroll scheduling broke down. Instead of guessing needs, we experienced them live with a customer.
- A new feature; backdated payroll: We added support for backdated payroll runs to our product roadmap. Not as a “nice-to-have,” but as part of building a tool that aligns with how teams actually operate.
- A cultural reminder of who we want to be: That night reaffirmed something deeper about Bloccpay’s identity:
We want to be the team that shows up. The team that does the hard, unscalable things when it matters for customers. The team that listens first, then ships.
This was also a reminder of why Bloccpay exists in the first place: to make sure global work isn’t held back by broken payment workflows. We’ll keep showing up in the messy moments, listening closely, and shipping what real teams actually need even if it starts with a single customer and a late-night call.
If you’re paying contractors across borders and wrestling with manual payroll processes, we’d love to talk.