In the payments industry, the merchant experience has long been an afterthought. Sales reps with a “used car” reputation, confusing contracts filled with hidden fees, and clunky reporting tools have been the norm for decades.
Samantha Ettus saw that frustration firsthand — and built Park Place Payments to flip the model.
Her strategy wasn’t just about technology or pricing. It was about rebuilding trust in an industry where most merchants feel burned, and doing it by rethinking who sells the product, how they sell it, and the experience merchants have after they sign on.
Lesson 1: Change the Messenger, Change the Market
Instead of recruiting from the usual pool of payment reps, Ettus designed a salesforce from outside the financial services industry.
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No bad habits — Every account executive is trained from scratch, online, with Park Place’s own process.
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Community-based selling — AEs sell locally to businesses they already know, building on pre-existing trust.
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Diversity by design — 80% of account executives are women, 40% are people of color, and many are professionals sidelined by ageism or other biases.
“If you want to appeal to a diverse group of customers, your team has to look like them,” Ettus says.
For SaaS & tech founders, this is a reminder: sales success isn’t just about product-market fit — it’s about seller-buyer fit.
Lesson 2: Build Platforms That Serve Your Sellers
With over 1,000 independent account executives across all 50 states, Ettus saw the risk of isolation for remote sellers. The solution: a dedicated AE platform that acts as their daily hub — showing earnings, delivering fresh training content, sharing product updates, and fostering peer community.
For SaaS companies running partner or channel programs, this mirrors the same principle: if you want external reps or resellers to thrive, you have to productize their experience, not just the end customer’s.
Lesson 3: Transparency as a Competitive Advantage
Most payment processors intentionally make reporting tools confusing, hiding fees behind cryptic statements. Park Place took the opposite approach, creating a merchant portal that’s clean, transparent, and user-friendly.
The logic is simple but powerful:
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Transparency builds trust.
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Trust drives retention.
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Retention increases lifetime value.
SaaS takeaway: transparency is more than a brand value — it can be a structural advantage in customer acquisition and retention.
Lesson 4: Fund for Scale, Not Survival
Although payment processing is often a “cash cow” that can be bootstrapped, Ettus chose a venture-backed path to build faster and differently — prioritizing customer service, diversity, and technology investment.
Her advice for founders raising capital:
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Seek smart money — investors who can open doors, not just write checks.
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Be selective — the wrong investors can weigh you down for the life of your business.
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Accept that VC adds both resources and responsibility — every round increases the weight on your shoulders.
Lesson 5: Culture Evolves, But Values Anchor It
Park Place operates two cultures in parallel:
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Full-time HQ staff
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Nationwide independent sales force
For both, Ettus fosters community, recognition, and mutual support — crucial in roles that can otherwise feel solitary.
Daily video huddles for staff, planned engagement tools for AEs, and an intentional focus on celebrating wins keep both groups connected to the mission.
Lesson 6: Think Beyond the Product
Ettus’s vision for Park Place isn’t just to process payments. It’s to become the go-to alternative to exploitative “side hustle” models — giving people an honest, recurring-revenue sales opportunity with no inventory costs.
It’s a two-sided growth play:
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Give sellers a career path with dignity and upside.
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Give merchants a partner they can trust for years.
That’s not just an operations strategy. It’s buyer-centric positioning in action.
Key Takeaways for SaaS & Tech Leaders
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Redesign your sales model — sometimes the fastest disruption comes from changing who sells, not just what they sell.
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Productize partner/rep experience — make it as intentional as your end-customer experience.
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Use transparency to differentiate — in industries known for complexity, clarity becomes a magnet.
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Be intentional with capital — know whether you’re funding for survival, stability, or speed.
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Culture is designed, not inherited — remote or distributed teams need engineered touchpoints.
Ettus sums up her approach simply:
“I’d rather have a great relationship with a merchant for 5–10 years than chase the churn-and-burn mentality that’s plagued this industry.”
For SaaS founders, that philosophy works just as well in software as it does in payments. The companies that win the next decade will be the ones that treat both their sellers and buyers as long-term partners, not short-term transactions.