Sept. 1 marks one month since Stax Payments announced the hire of Paulette Rowe as its new CEO.
Since then, the finance heavyweight has visited some of the Orlando-headquartered company’s offices around the U.S., gotten to know key staff members and deepened her relationship with primary investor Greater Sum Ventures, which she had an independent operating partner agreement with from January through July of this year, prior to joining Stax.
Rowe’s impressive leadership in the world of finance had her holding top positions at the Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclaycard Payment Solutions, Facebook and Paysafe, among others. All that experience comes to bear now, as she takes on one of the most exciting roles of her career.
Orlando Business Journal met up with Rowe to gain insights on payments technology, cybersecurity and more:
When you compare your experiences in the U.S. and Europe, what differences do you see in business perspectives and the marketplace?
From a technology point of view, Europe has in many ways moved faster. Asia, too. You probably have friends from Europe who, when they're over here, wonder why their card is taken by someone who swipes it. Contactless payments have moved more slowly here. But, and I don't mean to offend my European colleagues, there's a dynamism in the U.S. that is really exciting, which allows a company like Stax to grow as rapidly as it has. Despite all of the things that European governments try to do to support fintechs and innovation, it always feels like it's a bit more dynamic and more possible here in the U.S.
What are the big opportunities you see for Stax?
While Stax has really made its name in that direct-to-small-business space, what excited me more was the pivot that they have started to make in the [independent software vendor] world: embedding payments into software and going after specialized targeted industry verticals. This is where the U.S. is further ahead. The combination of the energy and quality of the Stax team with Greater Sum Ventures’ understanding of that software market should allow us to really grow very quickly in that space.
What’s your background with payments embedded in software and industry vertical targeting?
I had started looking into it when I was at Barclay’s, and then coming into Paysafe, I built the business around independent software vendors. I’ve had a lot of direct experience of what it means to be successful in this side of the market.
What are your observations about Greater Sum Ventures so far?
They’re our main investors, based in Knoxville, [Tennessee]. I was recently there for my first board meeting. Greater Sum Ventures was a huge part of my decision. No matter how strong a company might look on paper, you want to have investors with whom you can see ROI (return on investment), who are going to work collaboratively with you, who share a vision for where the company needs to go next. Greater Sum Ventures' track record of investing in the SaaS space and their understanding of payments through those investments really got me excited.
What are your thoughts about cybersecurity for Stax?
It's an area that I have put immediate focus on. If you don't stay ahead of the game, you become the easy way in or the path of least resistance. That's where the fraudsters and hackers like to go. We are investing further in our cybersecurity defenses. We've appointed a chief information officer who was previously at Greater Sum Ventures as an operating partner.
What concerns me more — and we're doing a lot of research on partners who can support us — is the growth of AI and the associated risk of deep fakes. I've sat on boards of companies where deep fakes have started to become an issue. People pretending to be a senior member of a team, even a CEO. Being able to spot that is incredibly important, and then it's really down to individual responsibility as well, because you can have all of those defenses up, but if you don't have your team trained to have a level of awareness about what they're clicking on, what they're downloading, you’ll just allow this path in. We're doing a lot of training, making sure everyone is hyper aware.
Speaking of AI, some workers are afraid of AI impacting their jobs negatively. Do you see ways that AI can be helpful to workers?
With machine learning crawling through your data and looking for patterns that are difficult for individuals to see, patterns can be presented to the team so they can really start to understand the difference between a false positive and a real threat. In this case, AI actually enhances people's roles because they're not having to do the drudgery of going through the data. They can use AI to inform what they do and make better decisions.
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