Remote and Payoneer acquisitions to give 'HR leaders the confidence to hire across borders'

Just three weeks into 2026, the HR market has seen two major deals: Remote acquiring Atlas, and Payoneer’s acquisition of Boundless.

The acquisitions follow quickly on the heels of Phenom's acquisition of agentic people analytics platform, Included AI.

Both Remote and Payoneer's deals point to the same strategic priority: giving employers greater control over the lifecycle of global work – from compliance to pay and expenses.

With distributed work here to stay, vendors are moving away from one-off tools and towards all-in-one platforms to help HR leaders better manage teams across borders.

Through these acquisitions, both Remote and Payoneer aim to reduce complexity for globally distributed teams, bringing payroll and financial tools into a more unified workforce management experience.

Improving finances across boarders

The first deal was made when global financial technology company Payoneer acquired Ireland-based Employer of Record (EOR) platform, Boundless, with the intention of delivering a “comprehensive financial stack” to international SMBs

By joining forces, Payoneer and Boundless will work to simplify global workforce management for cross-border SMBs, helping them navigate payroll, compliance, and payments more easily as they scale internationally.

For Sundeep Sahi, GM Workforce Management at Payoneer, this is part of the company’s mission to remove “friction between HR, finance and compliance,” stating that “the future of global hiring isn’t about adding more vendors.”

He therefore states that the deal is about “building infrastructure” that enables companies to scale their global teams responsibly, “especially in highly regulated markets like Europe.”

Building on this, Dee Coakley, CEO & Co-Founder at Boundless tells UNLEASH: “EOR is no longer a standalone HR tool, it’s part of a broader operating stack. As customers scale internationally, they expect employment, payroll and payments to work together seamlessly.Building on this, Dee Coakley, CEO & Co-Founder at Boundless tells UNLEASH: “EOR is no longer a standalone HR tool, it’s part of a broader operating stack. As customers scale internationally, they expect employment, payroll and payments to work together seamlessly.

“Joining Payoneer allows us to embed our European compliance expertise into a global financial platform, giving HR leaders the confidence to hire across borders without creating operational or regulatory drag.”

Remote’s CEO and Co-Founder, Job van der Voort, shares a similar stance on the issues international businesses face, explaining that managing financial operations across borders is “incredibly complex,” remaining “one of the biggest hurdles for companies looking to scale globally.”

As a result, Remote acquired Atlas to enable customers to offer more holistic and modern employee experiences to their teams by offering a unified, AI-native platform.

From the deal, Remote will benefit from the Atlas card – the first global employee card designed specifically for remote teams, a flexible points system – to allocate budgets without processing reimbursements, and integrated global healthcare – offering local health insurance across multiple key markets.

Speaking to UNLEASH about the acquisition, van der Voort says: “From the first time we met the Atlas team, we were immediately impressed by how quickly they had built such high-quality solutions to a problem that has traditionally been fragmented and painful for businesses and employees alike.”

Building upon this, van der Voort explains that bringing cards and spending tools into the business has been a long-standing ambition, and Atlas provides an “exceptional foundation to do this right.”

Looking to the future, he concludes: “With the Atlas team already onboarded, we’re accelerating our ability to deliver more seamless, integrated financial experiences that help our customers move faster and support their teams anywhere in the world.”Looking to the future, he concludes: “With the Atlas team already onboarded, we’re accelerating our ability to deliver more seamless, integrated financial experiences that help our customers move faster and support their teams anywhere in the world.”

Together, both acquisitions demonstrate how global workforce management is evolving – with HR being increasingly expected to deliver not just hiring and compliance, but the financial infrastructure needed to support international teams.