Jax becomes North American headquarters for an internationally based company but it comes at a cost

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The City of Jacksonville has formed an alliance with an internationally based company from London called Paysafe. The city and Paysafe say this is going to bring the city a ton of jobs. While that’s exciting news, it does come at a cost.

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Six hundred high-paying jobs are coming to Jacksonville over the next three years. And while Paysafe’s CEO tells me the average salary will be a little more than $150,000, I’ve learned that city and state incentive money is being used to lure the company here.

Paysafe, a multinational online payments company, wants Jacksonville to be its North American headquarters. The company also wants the Jax location to offer payment provider services for consumers and merchants.

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“An international business, in a targeted industry bringing in North American headquarters here to Jacksonville. 600 high paying jobs are going to be in our community so that’s fantastic,” says Kirk Wendland, executive director of the Jacksonville Office of Economic Development.

Paysafe leaders say they already have 1,000 employees in the U.S., and some might transfer here. Bruce Lowthers, Paysafe’s CEO, explained who might want to get resumes together.

“We have a lot of sales opportunities, we have a lot of accounting, finance, a lot of legal opportunities and obviously tech jobs as well,” says Lowthers.

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“Looking at the economy of our state, we have a 2.5% unemployment rate, that’s for September, still waiting on October numbers. In September that compared to the nation at 3.5%, since then they’ve tricked up to 3.7%,” says Dane Eagle, who is responsible for economic development at the state level.

In the next year it could change, but 2.5% is the second-lowest unemployment rate in state history.

We’ve learned that Paysafe will qualify for $10 million in city and $3 million in state incentives. That would amount to just over $21,600 in incentives per job created.

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“What I would say is we’ve been able to work out a win for the city, state, Paysafe so we have to achieve our goals in order for us to get any kind of incentive,” says Lowthers.

State incentives were approved for the state last month. As for the city, an economic development package will be introduced to Jacksonville’s City Council next week.