PayPal CEO Alex Chriss teased news he said will be coming on January 25th. PayPal will announce a “first look” at what’s coming to market in 2024, he said in a post on LinkedIn using the hashtag #PayPalFirstLook:
“25 years ago, at the dawn of the internet, PayPal was created and e-commerce was born. Fast forward through decades of innovation and unimaginable growth, PayPal is leading the way to revolutionize commerce – again!
“Please join me for an exclusive preview of the first innovations PayPal and Venmo are piloting and bringing to market this year – innovations that we believe will change commerce as we know it.
“Tune in to PayPal First Look on our YouTube channel on January 25 at 9:30am PT.
“You won’t want to miss it!”
PayPal named Chriss CEO last year, replacing retiring 65-year-old CEO Dan Schulman, who had guided PayPal through the breakup with eBay in 2015. (Former eBay CEO remains Chairman of the PayPal Board and is also CEO of Nike.)
PayPal’s current CEO Chriss had spent 19 years at Intuit where he led its $12 billion acquisition of Mailchimp in 2021 and grew Intuit’s Small Business segment customer base 20% annually during his 5 years heading the program.
PayPal will make the “First Look” announcement on its YouTube channel next Thursday at 12:30 Eastern – feel free to share your predictions in the comments below.
Could it be they will create a marketplace? When Paypal and eBay split, each signed the agreement stating eBay would not create their own payment system for 5 years, and Paypal would not create a marketplace for 5 years. It turned out that eBay began planning to create a payment system that same day. If Paypal never planned on creating a marketplace, why even put it in writing.
When eBay started Mangled Payments, this had to effect Paypal’s bottom line. Most payment on eBay before MP went through PP, and as individual sellers, PP took away all sales volume pricing, so everyone was paying the max 2.9%. Even if that same volume flowed through eBay’s PP account, they are paying 0.9% max, possibly less. Then these eBay sellers would leave a balance in their accounts to pay eBay fees, buy new stock, or just to shop with, and they made interest off of this float. No way eBay doesn’t sweep their PP account daily, if not hourly, of funds. This had to have effected their bottom line.
Granted, who would trust the leadership at PP to run a fair marketplace, with all of their latest nickel and diming uses, retracting seller protections, and increasing fees. But any competition in the marketplace arena would be good for sellers, as they would have to compete for sellers’ business.