Three years of English training at Paysonix

Most case studies cover a single course that ran for a few months. This one covers three years. We have trained Paysonix, a fintech payments company, since 2023, and the length is the point: the hard part of corporate English is not the first term, it is keeping people improving once they reach the advanced levels where progress goes quiet.

The company and where English sits in the work

Paysonix builds a unified payment interface for PSPs and merchants, handling card, e-wallet, online banking, QR and mobile payments. For a team like that, English is not a side skill. It runs through calls with international partners and vendors, integration and technical-requirement discussions, product updates, international meetings, and the kind of business correspondence where one unclear sentence turns into three follow-up emails. This is the gap generic business English misses: the team needs the specific conversations of payments work, not textbook scenarios.

Two conditions that pulled in opposite directions

The company set two conditions at the start, and they usually trade against each other: keep attendance high, and keep the budget tight. The group format is how you hold both. Groups of five or six people keep the cost per learner down, and at that size everyone still gets to talk and nobody hides at the back. It only works if the teaching is strong and the programme bends to the real work.

How the programme worked

We tested everyone’s level first, then split people into groups by proficiency and by the kind of work they do, so a B2 group preparing for client calls was not sitting through the same material as a C1 group.
Each group then followed a long arc rather than a one-off course: B2 to B2+ to C1, or C1 to C1+. Classes run online with native-speaker teachers, Caitlin and Anne, two or three times a week, an hour at a time.
There are certificates at the end of each level, and a group moves up only when it is ready.

In total, 22 people have trained across six groups, and three groups are still going today on General and Business English.

How the groups progressed

The groups went different ways, which is how it should be.
  • One started at C1 in late 2024 and moved to C1+ General and Business English within the year, finishing with motivation at 4.5 out of 5, self-study at 4, and a final test at 80.7 percent.
  • Another began at B2 in mid 2024, finished B2+, and reached C1 in early 2026. That group asked to keep training at C1, which is the part worth noticing: people do not ask for more of something that is not working.
  • A third group is the newest, relaunched at B1 in spring 2026.

The numbers the company cared about

Average attendance this spring was 82 percent. Anyone who has tried to hold a fintech team in a recurring class through release cycles and incident weeks knows that figure is hard to reach.

The January 2026 NPS came back at 9 out of 10 from the manager, who noted how easy UnifyHub was to work with, and 9 out of 10 from the students.

What the students actually said

The feedback was more useful than the scores.

  • They liked that the topics were relevant and the atmosphere was not stiff.
  • They valued that we could reshape a programme mid-course when the group’s needs shifted, and reschedule a class when work got loud.
  • And they kept mentioning the teachers, not their credentials but their humour, and the fact that they always stopped to check whether anyone had more questions.

What this case shows

A group format keeps corporate English affordable without making the learning worse, as long as the teaching is strong and the programme bends to the real work.

The hard stretch is not the start. It is the advanced levels, where progress goes quiet and people stop feeling like they are improving. A steady programme and teachers the group trusts do most of the work there.

That is why we run English for IT and fintech teams as a managed programme rather than a marketplace of one-off lessons.

Frequently asked questions

How long does corporate English training usually take to show results?

Early results come within the first months, but real level change is a long arc. In this case groups moved across full CEFR levels over one to two years, with the hardest progress at the advanced stages.

Does group training work as well as one-to-one?

For most corporate teams, yes, at groups of five or six. That size keeps cost per learner low and still gives everyone speaking time. It works when teachers are strong and the programme adapts to the team’s real work.

How do you keep attendance high in a busy fintech team?

By making the content relevant to daily work and by rescheduling around release cycles and incidents rather than forcing a fixed slot. In this case attendance averaged 82 percent across a spring of release work.