Paylocity buys Blue Marble Payroll for $61.0M in a related-party deal, adding global payroll to a US-only rate card

Paylocity entered an Equity Purchase Agreement for Blue Marble Payroll, LLC on 31 August 2021, acquiring all issued and outstanding equity interests for cash consideration of $60,961 thousand — about $61.0M — subject to customary purchase-price adjustments. Per the FY2024 Form 10-K, Blue Marble’s “payroll platform enables U.S.-based companies to manage payroll for employees outside the U.S. in line with complex local and country-specific” requirements.

The governance detail is unusual enough to record: “An entity affiliated with Steven I. Sarowitz, the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the largest shareholder of the Company, was the largest equity holder of Blue Marble.” Paylocity’s Board appointed the Audit Committee — comprised solely of directors independent of Blue Marble management, the Blue Marble equity holders and the Company — to evaluate, assess and negotiate the terms on its behalf.

The pricing angle: global payroll is the one Paylocity capability where the industry norm is an explicitly published per-worker or per-country rate — Deel, for instance, publishes a per-employee monthly figure that Paylocity’s own comparison listicle reprints. Paylocity advertises support for 100+ countries and publishes no rate for any of them. Global payroll simply joins the module pick-list and is priced in the Order like everything else.