Paysafe Beefs up Its Sales Force As It Looks for Merchant Growth

Since he took over as chief executive in 2022, Paysafe Ltd.’s Bruce Lowthers has stressed what he sees as a crucial need for stronger, and direct, merchant sales to effect the turnaround he wanted to see at the international processing giant. Early Wednesday, he noted the company is ahead of its hiring goal, having now brought on board 170 new sales reps, up from 104 three months ago.

In total, “we have doubled the size of our sales team the last few months,” he told equity analysts on a call to discuss Paysafe’s September-quarter results, without stating the overall number. “We’re progressing on track.”

The sales expansion is crucial to the company’s efforts to bring on new merchants of all sizes, enterprise as well as small, Lowthers stressed, in an effort to assert more control over Paysafe’s financial results. “We are making our own weather,” he said. “We have really good visibility as to what the outcome will be.”

Already, he noted, “the pipeline is strong.” That strength will build on some 83 deals struck in 2024 with enterprise-size merchants. “We’re seeing solid growth for these numbers,” Lowthers added, partly as a result of the new sales teams.

Beyond a beefed-up sales team, Lowthers is counting on popular point-of-sale technology to buoy his growth strategy. This effort includes a close alliance with Fiserv Inc., developer of the popular Clover POS device. “We sell a lot of Clover,” he noted. “We feel good about expanding the products we sell from Fiserv into the market. That’s something we’ll be pushing on in 2025.”

Clover generated $311 billion in annualized volume in Fiserv’s third quarter, the company said last month, up 15% year-over-year. That result came as the product added a kitchen-display unit for the red-hot restaurant segment.

More merchants will help kickstart growth, but a new chief financial officer may help squeeze more profitability out of that planned expansion. Paysafe announced in September that John Crawford is joining the company as chief financial officer, succeeding Alex Gersh, who is moving into what the company says is an advisory role to Lowthers. Both Crawford and Gersh joined Lowthers on Wednesday’s earnings call. T

The move represents a return to Paysafe for Crawford, who left the company in 2022 after having served as an executive vice president for eight years. He will now “focus on cost discipline” and on rationalizing technology, he told analysts on Wednesday’s call. “We’ve got too many systems,” he said. “We can improve efficiency there.”

As it is, Paysafe’s merchant unit drove volume up 8% for the quarter, to $32 billion, on the strength of e-commerce activity, including iGaming. That helped drive an 11% increase in revenue, to $241.1 million. Paysafe’s other unit, digital wallets, delivered 5% growth in volume, to $5.9 billion, good for $190.9 million in revenue, up 4%.

For Paysafe as a whole, volume rose 7% to $37.5 billion, pumping revenue up 8% to $427.1 million. Adjusted net income dropped 11%, to $31.4 million.

Wall Street’s immediate reaction was negative, as Paysafe’s shares fell more than 24% following the earnings call, to slightly more than $19 per share. This follows what had been a steady upward march for the stock, from just under $13 per share at the start of the year.  Analysts had expected earnings of 58 cents per share, compared to the 51 cents Paysafe announced Wednesday.