Paulette Rowe, the new CEO for Orlando-based tech unicorn Stax Payments, now is preparing to move here from the U.K., where she has lived and worked for much of her career.
She plans to have two home bases: one in Orlando and another in Atlanta, giving her immediate access to a hub for the payments industry.
Before joining Stax, Rowe held top positions at the Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclaycard Payment Solutions, Facebook and Paysafe, among others.
Here are 5 things to know about Rowe:
- She has lived in the U.S. before. Rowe’s first job after graduating from business school INSEAD was in Stanford, Connecticut, for General Electric. The year was 1994 and Rowe was recruited to the company’s global leadership development program.
- Rowe has worked on five continents. Her GE job took her to Tokyo, where she worked on an acquisition for GE Capital. Jobs also took her to Brazil and Africa. “I learned and was exposed to a lot of leadership lessons that are still with me even now,” she said.
- Rowe loves the Stax startup story. She first heard about Stax from a friend and found the company’s simplified subscription model appealing. But what attracted her most was the background of the founders. “I was really energized by their story.”
- In the world of payments, Rowe is a force. Named as one of 100 Executive Women in Tech to Watch in 2022 by Womentech Network, Digital Banking Club’s Power 50 and one of the most influential women in payments by PaymentsSource, she has deep experience working at scale.
- Rowe has blazed a trail with contactless payments. While at Barclaycard, she and her team were the first to roll out contactless payments for London’s public transportation.
The product offered by Stax, which is used by 30,000 businesses and has processed over $30 billion in payments to date, is an application programming interface (API) for payment processing and analysis.
Most credit card processing services charge clients a percentage markup on each transaction. Stax has a subscription-based model and does not mark up interchange fees. Subscriptions range between $99 and $199 monthly, depending on the selected plan. A NerdWallet review said Stax is a good fit for companies that process $5,000 or more in credit card transactions per month.
The startup that launched as Fattmerchant in Orlando in 2014 quickly grew to nearly 300 employees as its payment processing platform for small and large businesses took off. Achieving unicorn status — a billion-dollar valuation — was significant for Stax as well as the Central Florida ecosystem overall. Stax is the first tech unicorn headquartered in Orlando since its founding.
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