Paulette Rowe, CEO of Stax, on winning in embedded payments

In this episode of the Fintech One-on-One podcast, we talk with Paulette Rowe, CEO of Stax, a payments technology company that's making waves in the embedded payments space by taking a fundamentally different approach than many competitors. Rather than simply reselling services from payment processing giants, Stax has built and acquired the technology to own their entire stack, from gateway to clearing and settlement. This strategic decision allows them to move faster, provide better data, and offer more flexibility to their clients, particularly in the vertical SaaS and ISV market where they are seeing rapid growth.

Paulette, who brings a unique perspective from her extensive payments experience across both the UK and US markets, discusses how Stax differentiates itself in the competitive embedded payments landscape, their innovative Stax Connect Plus offering that helps ISVs dramatically improve payment attachment rates, and how AI is already transforming their customer support operations. The conversation also explores the future of payments innovation, including the potential for agentic AI in e-commerce and Stax's international expansion plans.

In this podcast you will learn:

• Paulette’s career arc and the journey to the CEO job at Stax.
• How the US payments landscape differs from the UK and Europe.
• The comprehensive payments solutions provided by Stax.
• How they work with ISVs (independent software providers).
• The two acquisitions they have made in the past two years.
• Why they developed Stax Connect Plus.
• How Stax differentiates itself in the ISV embedded payments market.
• How they compete with the Stripes and Squares of the world.
• What markets Stax operates in today.
• Paulette’s thoughts on the new payments rails being developed.
• How they have been using AI internally and then, Benji for customer support.
• How they are preparing for Agentic AI for e-commerce.
• The biggest opportunities in the future for Stax.

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