PayPal Holdings Inc. named Alex Chriss chief executive officer, tapping a longtime fintech executive with a focus on small businesses to lead the beleaguered payments giant.<\/p>\n
Chriss, who led Intuit Inc.\u2019s QuickBooks business, will start in the new role on Sept. 27, according to a statement Monday. He replaces Dan Schulman, who will stay on as a director.<\/p>\n
Chriss, 46, is taking the reins of a company that was once a pandemic darling, as activity on its platforms swelled when consumers were stuck at home and turned to online shopping in droves.<\/p>\n
Now, though, it\u2019s contending with a slowdown in growth and the stock has plummeted.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Chriss will be inheriting a challenged but not un-fixable story,\u201d Dan Dolev, an analyst at Mizuho Securities USA, said in a note to clients.<\/p>\n
PayPal said earlier this year that Schulman, 65, would retire in coming months. He will remain on the board until its next annual shareholder meeting in May.<\/p>\n
With Chriss, PayPal\u2019s board is turning to an executive with a history of dealmaking and a focus on providing technology to small businesses.<\/p>\n
He led Intuit\u2019s $12 billion acquisition of the email marketing firm Mailchimp in 2021, a move that bolstered Intuit\u2019s offerings for businesses looking for ways to reach and serve customers online.<\/p>\n
\u201cThroughout my career, I have championed small and medium businesses and entrepreneurs,\u201d Chriss said in the statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am proud to take the baton from Dan and thrilled to have the opportunity to work with PayPal\u2019s talented and committed team.\u201d<\/p>\n
PayPal rose 2% to $62.78 at 10:42 a.m. in New York. The company\u2019s stock peaked at $308.53 in July 2021, which gave it a market capitalization of more than $360 billion. It\u2019s now valued at less than $70 billion.<\/p>\n
Since 2021, the company has been dealing with a bevy of senior-level departures, including then-chief financial officer John Rainey.<\/p>\n
Jim Magats, who oversaw PayPal\u2019s omni-channel solutions division, and Darrell Esch, who led the Venmo unit, both departed in 2022.<\/p>\n
Last week, the company announced that Jonathan Auerbach, who was most recently the chief strategy, growth and data officer, will be leaving the company next year.<\/p>\n
Now, with Schulman\u2019s move, it will mean that all but one of the senior executives who presented at the company\u2019s\u00a0investor day in 2021<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0have decided to leave the company.<\/p>\n The one executive from that presentation that remains is Peggy Alford, who is executive vice president of global sales and merchant services and was seen as a potential candidate to replace Schulman.<\/p>\n Chriss\u2019s appointment caps a months-long search by PayPal\u2019s board for a replacement for Schulman, who has been leading a massive cost-cutting effort in advance of a new CEO coming in.<\/p>\n The company in January\u00a0said<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0it would dismiss 2,000 staffers as part of that push.<\/p>\n Schulman, in recent quarters, has sought to refocus PayPal on its core payments checkout experience after a push to become the world\u2019s next \u201csuper app\u201d went awry.<\/p>\n For years, Schulman espoused goals of adding hundreds of millions of users, though he has since reined in those ambitions in favour of focusing on just encouraging existing users to use PayPal more often.<\/p>\n Still, the company continues to dabble in new forms of payments. This month, it said it\u2019s rolling out a stablecoin, the first by a large financial company and a potentially significant boost to the sluggish adoption of digital tokens for payments.<\/p>\n PayPal has been investing in its unbranded payments technology too, though that has sparked concern among some shareholders who fear the branded PayPal checkout options are losing share to newer competitors such as Apple Inc.\u2019s mobile wallet.<\/p>\n The unbranded business is also less lucrative than the branded option.<\/p>\n \u201cThe board search committee worked diligently and thoroughly to find the right candidate to take PayPal into its next stage of growth and expansion, and we are confident Alex is that person,\u201d John Donahoe, chairman of the PayPal board of directors, said in the statement.<\/p>\n Former Intuit QuickBooks boss Alex Chriss is taking the reins of a company that was once a pandemic darling, as activity on its platforms swelled when consumers were stuck at home and turned to online shopping in droves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":463967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10106],"tags":[88562,78614,88560,8317,169,82967],"class_list":["post-504368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-alex-chris","tag-dan-schulman","tag-fintechs","tag-intuit","tag-paypal","tag-quickbooks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504384,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504368\/revisions\/504384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: MTN selling stake of R99-billion fintech business to Mastercard<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"