This startup helps women make bank while tapping into the mainstream
A new fintech startup is looking to revolutionize the payments industry with the first-ever direct sales force made up of women.
Park Place Payments launched after announcing it raised more than $1 million in seed funding.
"At Park Place Academy we train women across the country to sell in their zip code,” said Park Place Payments CEO Samantha Ettus to FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday. “Once they have the sales skills, it’s really all about relationship building.”
“These are relationships they’ve already had,” she added. “They have relationships with their dentists, their toy store, their bookstore, with everyone in their community including their hair salons… You’re helping mainstream at the same time as you’re making a lot of money,” she explained.
Park Place Payments is tackling two industry points. In an industry first, it has established a financial services career path within direct sales for those who want to reenter the workforce. The company is also transforming a stagnant $8 billion payment processing industry historically plagued by massive churn, dated technology and a lack of pricing transparency.
Park Place Payments provides small businesses with point of sales next generation technology, pricing consistency, and premium customer service led by women who previously did not have a profitable career path when reentering the workforce, Ettus said.
“These are women who have formerly been on the sidelines in this untapped labor force of women who only maybe had alternatives like selling makeup and skincare to their friends and now they’re selling financial services in their communities,” she said.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX BUSINESS APP
According to a Center for Talent Innovation study, 90 percent of women who left their jobs to either raise families or for other personal reasons want to reenter the workforce yet face daunting odds. More than 50 percent are unable to ever secure a full-time position again and most fall into stereotypical female direct sales industries like jewelry and makeup, in which they are generally paying to sell products vs. creating capital for themselves.
“What we found is that all of the merchants and owners are desperately seeking transparency and this industry has been acting a lot more like the used car sales industry, where everyone’s charging a different rate, there’s all these different fees, so we’ve brought transparency through the sales force of professional women who are incredible,” Ettus said.
“I was really focused on getting a really diverse group of investors, so we wanted people of color and we wanted more than half women and we got there,” she added.