• PayPal has appointed Alex Chriss as its new CEO.
• Chriss, who will replace current CEO Dan Schulman, will begin his role on September 27.
• Chriss comes to PayPal after a 19-year tenure at Intuit.

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Fintech pioneer PayPal is back in the headlines today. After unveiling the launch of its stablecoin last week, the California-based company announced it has appointed Alex Chriss as new CEO.

Chriss will replace Dan Schulman on September 27 of this year. This comes after, earlier this year, Schulman declared his intention to retire. “I’m at a point in my life where I want to devote more time to my passions outside the workplace,” Schulman said in February. He will remain on the company’s Board until May 2024.

After Schulman’s statement, PayPal’s Board of Directors began a six-month long search for a new CEO who could not only drive growth, but also had extensive global payments, product, and technology experience. After an “extensive engagement and evaluation,” PayPal’s Board unanimously agreed on Chriss to lead the company.

“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 Chair of the PayPal Board of Directors John Donahoe. “The 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.”

Chriss will join PayPal and its Board from Intuit, where he served as Executive Vice President and General Manager of the company’s Small Business and Self-Employed Group. He has been with Intuit for more than 19 years after starting out as a Group Manager of Business Development and Channel Sales of the Quickbase business unit.

During his tenure at Intuit, Chriss grew the Small Business segment’s customers at a 20% CAGR and its revenues at a 23% CAGR. In 2021, he led Intuit’s successful $12 billion acquisition of Mailchimp.

“PayPal is an extraordinary company that plays a critical role in the lives of consumers and merchants all over the world,” said Chriss. “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.”

• Bold Commerce and PayPal struck up a partnership that will better integrate payments into more checkout experiences.
• Using Bold Commerce’s headless checkout tool, retailers can place a point-of-sale wherever shoppers interact, including on blogs, within social media, and even on the packaging of a physical good.
• The new solution is available in Bold Commerce’s Checkout Experience Suite.

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Customizable commerce company Bold Commerce announced today it is collaborating with PayPal to better integrate payments into the checkout experience. Because, as Bold Commerce Co-Founder Yvan Boisjoli puts it, “The checkout experience needs to extend to everywhere shoppers are today, which also means that a full range of payment options need to be available to shoppers wherever they are.”

Using Bold Commerce’s PayPal-enabled tool, retailers can put the checkout wherever shoppers interact. A point of sale can be placed on blogs, within social media, and even on the packaging of a physical good with a QR code printed on the label. Upon checkout, consumers can use a range of payment options, including PayPal, Venmo, PayPal Pay Later, credit and debit cards, and multiple local payment methods.

“Payment choice and flexibility have always been a critical part of a successful commerce experience – but it’s only one part of the equation. Retailers today need to also offer a tailored checkout experience to help drive increased conversion,” said PayPal VP, Global Head of Channel Partnerships David Bruce. “It’s a powerful combination for a composable checkout to plug into any tech stack, and we’re excited to deepen our commerce capabilities with Bold Commerce.”

The new, flexible checkout method is expected to increase checkout conversion on merchant websites and what Bold Commerce is calling “shoppable touchpoints,” which will drive more revenue by decreasing friction. The headless, all-in-one payments and checkout solution is available in Bold Commerce’s Checkout Experience Suite.

“Through this new integration we’re making it easy and accessible to power checkout anywhere, with any payment method. We’re looking forward to working with PayPal as they make this move into headless commerce,” added Boisjoli.

Bold Commerce was founded in 2012. The Canada-based company’s Checkout Experience Suite offers a customizable headless checkout tool with built-in subscription and pricing capabilities. Bold Commerce counts more that 9,000 brands and retailers as clients, including Pepsi, Mars, and Williams Sonoma.

Bold Commerce has raised $44 million and has been named to Deloitte’s Tech Fast 50, E&Y’s Entrepreneur of the Year, and CBInsights’ Retail Tech 100.

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Photo by Adrien Delforge on Unsplash

• PayPal is boosting its humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
• The payments company is expanding upon its P2P money transfer services, waiving fees, and facilitating funds transfers to payments cards.
• These efforts are being made in addition to the company’s Cash Pick-Up and Mobile Phone Reload tools.

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Citizens across the globe have donated millions of dollars in aid to the people living in Ukraine since the Russia invasion last month. And financial services provider PayPal is paying attention. The San Francisco-based company announced three new moves yesterday that will help people living in the region access humanitarian funds.

Peer-to-peer payments expansion

PayPal is expanding upon its existing money transfer services. The company is enabling Ukrainian PayPal accountholders to send and receive peer-to-peer (P2P) payments in four currencies– USD, CAD, GBP, and EUR.

Waiving fees

PayPal is waiving its own fees until June 30 for customers sending funds to Ukrainian PayPal accounts or receiving funds into Ukrainian PayPal accounts. Additionally, PayPal’s international remittance service, Xoom, is waiving transaction fees sent to recipients in Ukraine.

Funds transfers

PayPal will allow Ukrainian accountholders to transfer funds from their Ukrainian PayPal Wallet to an eligible Mastercard or Visa debit or credit card. Once the transfer has taken place, the money will be available in the currency associated with the payment card.

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In addition to these new efforts, PayPal also offers Cash Pick-Up, a feature that enables digital money transfers to be sent to be picked up at physical locations throughout Ukraine such as Oschadbank, Privatbank, and Ukrgasbank; and Mobile Phone Reload, a tool to reload mobile phone airtime at five telco carriers.

PayPal is among many other fintechs making technological efforts to stem the violence in Ukraine and bring aid the country’s citizens. And as Russia’s war crimes continue and the situation worsens, we expect to see more fintechs rise to the occasion.

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Photo by Tina Hartung on Unsplash

PayPal has confirmed recent rumors regarding plans to launch its own stablecoin. According to Bloomberg, which broke the news last week, a developer found evidence of PayPal’s future stablecoin in the form of the below logo inside the fintech’s iPhone app.

SVP of Crypto and Digital Currencies at PayPal Jose Fernandez da Ponte later confirmed the suspicion. “We are exploring a stablecoin; if and when we seek to move forward, we will of course, work closely with relevant regulators,” Fernandez da Ponte told Bloomberg.

Developer Steve Moser made the discovery by looking at hidden code inside the PayPal app. The code unveils work on PayPal Coin, a PayPal-specific stablecoin that would be backed by the U.S. dollar. After PayPal was made aware of the discovery, the company confirmed that the code was part of a recent internal hackathon and that details surrounding the project will likely change.

If the project comes to fruition, the stablecoin would be just one initiative among a host of other cryptocurrency efforts. In October of 2020 the company partnered with cryptocurrency company Paxos to allow PayPal users in the U.S. to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrencies. And last March, PayPal launched Checkout with Crypto, a tool that enables users with cryptocurrency holdings to transact using crypto at the online point of sale.

When it comes to working on a stablecoin launch, PayPal is in good company. Meta (formerly Facebook) was developing its own stablecoin, Diem, until it experienced regulatory hurdles and pivoted to work with the Pax dollar instead. On top of that, Visa is looking to leverage a stablecoin to settle transactions.

In addition to its stablecoin ambitions, PayPal is also hoping to gain a reputation as the first super app in the U.S. The company revamped its mobile app last September and now offers a range of features including direct deposit, billpay management, rewards, and more. Founded in 1998, PayPal is now listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker PYPL. The company’s market capitalization currently sits at $213 billion.