PayPal Names New CEO Amid Crypto Push

The board of directors at PayPal have announced that the new CEO will be Alex Chriss, the senior executive who runs the small business group at Intuit.

The PayPal board also announced that Alex Chriss will takeover as President and CEO, effective 27 September 2023. This is when PayPal’s long-serving CEO Dan Schulman will step down.

It has been a busy period for PayPal. In January it confirmed that hackers had accessed nearly 35,000 accounts in early December using valid passwords obtained from breaches of other websites.

Stablecoin launch

Then in February 2023 PayPal announced 2,000 job losses (or 7 percent of the workforce) as the US fintech firm admitted it was working to address the “challenging macroeconomic environment.”

A new development took place last week when PayPal said it would launch its own stablecoin, making it the first major financial technology company to launch one.

The PayPal USD (PYUSD) token formally launched a week ago and PayPal said it would become available “in the coming weeks” to US customers with PayPal Balance accounts.

The firm it would also be available “soon” on payments service Venmo, a PayPal subsidiary.

Stablecoins are pegged to the value of a major government issued-currency, but governments are still evaluating how to regulate them.

New CEO

Now as the firm presses ahead with its crypto move, the board of directors have concluded their search for the replacement for CEO Dan Schulman, after he previously announced he would step down from the role by the end of the year.

Schulman became PayPal’s CEO after the split from eBay in 2015, and will remain a director at the company until May 2024.

PayPal said Chriss has the unanimous support of the Board and its CEO search committee following extensive engagement and evaluation across all of the key metrics that are critical to PayPal’s future success.

PayPal said Chriss is a seasoned and highly successful business leader having joined Intuit 19 years ago, serving in increasing levels of leadership across the company, including creating Intuit’s Partner & Developer Platform, leading the Self-Employed Solutions team and then serving as the Small Business Group’s Chief Product Officer from 2017 to 2019.

“With his depth of experience in product development, his passion for serving customers and his longstanding commitment to empowering and enabling small businesses, and his proven track record of developing and inspiring his team, Alex is the perfect leader to take PayPal forward and accelerate the company’s growth opportunities,” said John Donahoe, Chair of the PayPal Board of Directors.

“On behalf of the Board, I also want to thank Dan Schulman for his outstanding leadership during PayPal’s eight years of growth as an independent company,” said Donahoe. “Dan made many major contributions to PayPal and helped establish the strong foundation for the future.”

“PayPal is an extraordinary company that plays a critical role in the lives of consumers and merchants all over the world,” said Alex Chriss, PayPal’s incoming President and CEO. “”Throughout my career, I have championed small and medium businesses and entrepreneurs, who are the backbone of every economy in the world.”

“I am proud to take the baton from Dan and thrilled to have the opportunity to work with PayPal’s talented and committed team to build on PayPal’s remarkable history and draw on its unique capabilities to deliver outstanding products and services to businesses and consumers,” said Chriss.