Salaries, bank accounts, National Insurance numbers, pension pots, sick records — payroll software holds the most sensitive personal data a business possesses, and files it to HMRC every payday. We looked inside nineteen payroll and HR systems sold to UK businesses to ask where all of that actually sits. For once, Britain has real choices — but the fashionable newcomers are quietly moving the payslips abroad.
Payroll is the software category where the stakes are least abstract. A CRM leak embarrasses you; a payroll leak exposes every employee’s salary, home address and bank account. It is also, like accounting, software the state is wired into: Real Time Information means your payroll system reports to HMRC every time you pay anyone.
So, same method as the rest of this series: nineteen products traced through their own published documents — who owns the vendor, who the product is built for, where a UK employee’s data lives, and what it runs on.
The good news first — and it’s genuinely good
This is the one category where British buyers have strength in depth. Zellis — “the UK and Ireland’s largest payroll provider” — is UK-run with UK-held data, and serves the enterprise end that British vendors usually abandon. MHR, family-owned in Nottingham, runs iTrent and People First on Microsoft’s UK cloud. Cintra (Newcastle, private-equity-backed) states its UK hosting first-party. IRIS’s Staffology, Sage Payroll and BrightHR cover the small end, with BrightHR declaring UK/EEA storage in its government-framework listing. And the quiet outlier is Moneysoft’s Payroll Manager — desktop software, founder-owned, where the vendor holds no payroll data at all because it never leaves your machine. It is this category’s GnuCash: the old way turns out to be the sovereign way.
The newcomers move the payslips abroad
The pattern reverses the moment you look at the products with the best marketing. Rippling — the fast-growing American platform — hosts solely on Amazon in US data centres: choose it for UK payroll and the payslips live in America. Employment Hero, the Australian challenger, keeps platform data in Australia. HiBob’s UK payroll (built from its acquisition of Pento) runs from Ireland and Germany, with OpenAI as an optional AI supplier. Germany’s Personio doesn’t run UK payroll natively at all — it hands off to Xero or Sage. France’s PayFit is the interesting survivor: it genuinely serves the UK (it was Germany it withdrew from — a reminder that European challengers retreat to core markets when money tightens). And ADP and Workday, the American giants that pay much of corporate Britain, don’t clearly say where UK payroll data sits — we recorded both as undisclosed.
There’s also an ownership model here worth noticing: SD Worx, one of Europe’s biggest payroll providers, is majority-owned by a Belgian foundation — the same investor-proof structure as Germany’s DATEV in accounting — though it declined to tell us (or anyone, publicly) whose computers it runs on.
The nineteen, at a glance
| Product | Owned from | Aimed at | UK payroll data lives | Runs on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zellis HCM Cloud [1] | UK (private equity) | Enterprise | UK | Microsoft Azure |
| Moorepay (Zellis) [2] | UK (private equity) | SMEs | UK | Microsoft Azure |
| iTrent / People First (MHR) [3] | UK (family-owned) | Mid-market & enterprise | UK | Microsoft Azure |
| Staffology (IRIS) [4] | UK (private equity) | SMEs & accountants | UK* | — |
| Sage Payroll [5] | UK (listed) | Small (≤150 employees) | (see accounting piece — Sage cloud on Azure/AWS) | Azure/AWS components |
| BrightHR Payroll [6] | UK (Peninsula-owned) | SMEs | UK/EEA (G-Cloud declaration) | Microsoft Azure |
| Cintra [7] | UK (private equity) | Mid-market | UK | Amazon (UK) |
| Moneysoft Payroll Manager [8] | UK (founder-owned) | Micro & small | Your own computer | Your own computer |
| KashFlow / FreeAgent / Xero payroll [9] | (see accounting piece) | Small | varies | varies |
| ADP iHCM [10] | USA (listed) | 50–1,000 staff | Not disclosed | — |
| Workday HCM [11] | USA (listed) | Enterprise | Not disclosed | Workday’s own |
| Deel Global Payroll [12] | USA (VC-backed) | SMEs to enterprise | Not disclosed | — |
| Rippling [13] | USA (VC-backed) | Startups to enterprise | USA | Amazon (sole) |
| SD Worx [14] | Belgium (foundation + PE minority) | Small to enterprise | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| Personio [15] | Germany (VC-backed) | 10–5,000 employees | EU (no native UK payroll — exports to Xero/Sage) | Amazon + Amazon Bedrock AI |
| PayFit [16] | France (VC-backed) | SMEs to ~500 | EU | — |
| HiBob (“Bob”) [17] | Israel (VC-backed) | Mid-market | Ireland/Germany | Amazon; OpenAI optional |
| Employment Hero [18] | Australia (VC-backed) | SMEs | Platform data in Australia | Amazon |
| Frappe HR (open source) [19] | India (founder-owned) | SMEs | Your choice (self-host) | Yours — UK statutory compliance is community territory |
*Staffology’s platform hosting location is not disclosed; IRIS states its AI processing happens in the UK.
What payroll buyers should ask
The standard six questions apply (owner; data location in writing; whose cloud; whose AI; who else touches it; what happens on sale). Payroll adds two of its own. “Where does my employees’ data go when it leaves you?” — payroll systems feed pension providers, benefits platforms and HMRC, so the supplier list is longer than it looks. And “who can see pay data inside your company, and from which country?” — support staff with access from overseas offices are part of the sovereignty picture too, and almost nobody documents it.
The dial reads differently in this category: the UK position is unusually easy to reach (Zellis, MHR, Cintra at the larger end; BrightHR and Moneysoft at the small end), which makes the choices that move payslips to America or Australia look more like defaults accepted than trade-offs made. If there’s one category where a UK business can simply choose British — owner, data and computers — it’s the one holding everyone’s bank details.
Sources
All facts are taken from each vendor’s own published documentation (security, data-location and sub-processor pages) and from company registries, read directly during June 2026. One reference per vendor.
- Zellis — Companies House: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/OC303117 ; G-Cloud (UK hosting): https://www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/791617325867626
- Moorepay — ownership: https://www.moorepay.co.uk/blog/zellis-aquires-apax/ ; technology/hosting: https://www.moorepay.co.uk/our-technology/
- MHR International — Companies House PSC: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01852206/persons-with-significant-control ; G-Cloud (UK hosting): https://www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/100444344601061
- IRIS (Staffology) — ownership: https://www.iris.co.uk/news/iris-software-group-secures-major-us-investment-from-leonard-green-partners/ ; AI/UK processing: https://www.iris.co.uk/accountancy/software/ai/
- Sage (Sage Payroll) — Companies House: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02231246 ; sub-processors/data: https://www.sage.com/en-gb/-/media/images/sagedotcom/master/global/feature/pdf/legal/sages-sub-processors.pdf
- BrightHR — Companies House PSC: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/06473841/persons-with-significant-control ; security/data: https://www.brighthr.com/security/
- Cintra — Companies House PSC: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12341491/persons-with-significant-control ; payroll/hosting: https://cintra.co.uk/payroll-software/
- Moneysoft — Companies House PSC: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02695617/persons-with-significant-control (desktop software; vendor holds no payroll data)
- KashFlow / FreeAgent / Xero payroll — see accounting case study; IRIS/KashFlow: https://www.kashflow.com/about/faqs/where-is-all-my-data-physically-kept/ ; FreeAgent: https://www.freeagent.com/us/features/security/ ; Xero: https://www.xero.com/uk/legal/xero-subprocessors/
- ADP — SEC filings: https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000008670&type=10-K (UK payroll data location not disclosed)
- Workday — SEC filings: https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&company=workday&type=10-K ; data residency: https://newsroom.workday.com/2025-11-19-Workday-Launches-Workday-EU-Sovereign-Cloud-to-Unlock-Enterprise-AI-With-Full-EU-Data-Residency-and-Control
- Deel — ownership/funding: https://techstartups.com/2025/10/16/payroll-startup-deel-hits-17-3-billion-valuation-with-300-million-series-e-funding/ ; security: https://www.deel.com/security/
- Rippling — Companies House PSC (UK entity): https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/13914364/persons-with-significant-control ; trust/security (US hosting): https://www.rippling.com/trust/security
- SD Worx — Companies House PSC (UK entity): https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/03100021/persons-with-significant-control (hosting not disclosed)
- Personio — ownership: https://www.personio.com/about-personio/press/personio-raises-200m-second-series-e/ ; hosting (AWS): https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/personio-case-study/
- PayFit — legal/ownership: https://payfit.com/legal-notice/
- HiBob — ownership: https://www.hibob.com/news/hibob-raises-150m-series-d-up-round-led-by-general-atlantic/ ; sub-processors/data: https://www.hibob.com/privacy/hibob-subsidiaries-and-sub-processors/
- Employment Hero — Companies House PSC (UK entity): https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/12861071/persons-with-significant-control ; security/data (Australia): https://help.employmenthero.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360001054196-Employment-Hero-s-security-measures-and-single-sign-on-SSO
- Frappe (Frappe HR) — ownership: https://frappe.io/blog/announcements/frappe-zerodha ; cloud servers/region: https://frappe.io/cloud/servers
Research notes: all facts from vendors’ own published documentation and company registries, read directly during June 2026. Locations and supplier lists change; check current documents before relying on them. This article reflects the opinions of the Information Matters team — human and AI — and should not be considered statements of fact. Please feel free to contact us if you would to suggest any corrections.
