With a storied career analyzing market dynamics and international business trends, Priya Jaiswal is a leading voice in banking and finance. Her insights into corporate leadership and competitive strategy offer a crucial lens through which to view the recent executive shake-up at PayPal, a titan of the payments industry facing a pivotal moment of transformation.
This conversation will explore the operational missteps that prompted this leadership change and what it signals about the board’s strategic vision. We will examine how the new CEO’s experience at HP could be leveraged to reinvigorate PayPal’s core offerings, particularly in the fiercely competitive branded checkout arena. We’ll also unpack the successes of the previous leadership and consider what executing with “greater speed and precision” truly means in a payments landscape being rapidly reshaped by artificial intelligence.
PayPal’s Q4 2025 results fell short of revenue expectations, and the board cited a slow pace of execution. What specific operational gaps likely prompted this leadership transition, and what immediate steps must be taken to regain momentum against competitors?
The board’s statement points directly to a frustration with the speed of innovation and execution, which is a critical flaw in a market moving this fast. The numbers tell part of the story; reporting $8.68 billion in revenue against an $8.8 billion forecast isn’t just a miss, it’s a signal that the company is losing ground. The most glaring gap, as acknowledged by the interim head, is in branded checkout. While competitors like Apple Pay and Klarna are offering increasingly seamless, integrated experiences, PayPal’s core product has felt stagnant. To regain momentum, the first step must be a radical simplification and enhancement of that checkout flow. They need to reduce clicks, improve conversion for merchants, and make it the undisputed path of least resistance for consumers.
Enrique Lores is recognized for expanding HP into services, subscriptions, and AI-enabled solutions. How might he apply that specific playbook to innovate PayPal’s core offerings, particularly in the highly competitive branded checkout space? Please describe a potential first-year initiative.
That experience at HP is precisely why he’s such a compelling choice. He’s not just a payments guy; he’s a leader who understands how to build recurring revenue streams and embed technology into a company’s DNA. He transformed a hardware-centric business into one driven by services and subscriptions. A potential first-year initiative for PayPal could be to launch a “Checkout-as-a-Service” platform for its merchants. Imagine a premium subscription tier offering advanced AI-driven fraud protection, personalized loyalty programs, and deeper customer analytics—all integrated directly into the payment button. This moves PayPal beyond a simple transaction fee and creates a stickier, value-added relationship with its business clients, mirroring the exact playbook he used at HP.
Given that Mr. Lores has been on PayPal’s board for nearly five years and served as chair, what does his appointment signal about the board’s confidence in the existing strategy versus its execution? How might his deep familiarity with the company accelerate its transformation?
His appointment is a clear and powerful signal that the board believes the fundamental strategy is sound, but the execution has been fumbled. You don’t bring in an outsider if you want a complete strategic overhaul; you bring in a trusted insider when you need to light a fire under the existing plan. Having been on the board for almost five years and serving as chair since July 2024, Lores has an intimate, unfiltered view of the company’s strengths and, more importantly, its weaknesses. There will be no six-month “listening tour.” He can walk in on day one and start making decisive changes, reallocating resources, and holding teams accountable because he already knows where the problems are. This deep familiarity is a massive accelerator.
Alex Chriss’s tenure saw significant growth in Venmo and the company’s BNPL offerings. Which elements of his product strategy proved successful, and how can the new leadership build upon these wins while pivoting to address the broader performance issues?
You absolutely cannot ignore the successes under Alex Chriss, as they provide a strong foundation. The growth in Venmo, which is on a trajectory to generate over $2 billion in revenue, is a massive win. It’s a powerful social payments ecosystem that keeps PayPal deeply relevant with a younger demographic. Similarly, expanding the BNPL offerings was a necessary and well-executed move to compete in the modern credit landscape. The new leadership must protect and nurture these assets. The key is to see them not as separate ventures but as vital components of the broader PayPal ecosystem. Lores can build upon this by more deeply integrating Venmo’s social features and BNPL’s flexibility directly into the core branded checkout, turning these successful side projects into powerful engines that fuel the primary product.
The payments sector is rapidly changing due to new technology and the acceleration of AI. With this in mind, what does executing with “greater speed and precision” practically mean for PayPal’s product development and market strategy over the next two years?
In practical terms, “greater speed and precision” means moving away from broad, slow-moving initiatives and adopting a far more agile, targeted approach. Speed means shrinking product development cycles from years to months, or even weeks, to test and deploy new features that can directly counter moves from competitors. Precision means using the vast trove of data PayPal has, supercharged by AI, to focus ruthlessly on what moves the needle—namely, merchant conversion and consumer convenience in the checkout process. It means no more pet projects. Every dollar of investment and every engineering hour must be directed at solving a specific competitive threat or customer pain point, with clear metrics for success delivered “quarter on quarter,” as Lores himself stated.
What is your forecast for the digital payments landscape over the next five years?
The next five years will be defined by intense consolidation and intelligence. The lines between payment providers, social networks, and e-commerce platforms will continue to blur, and standalone payment buttons will feel archaic. The winners will be the platforms that use AI not just for fraud detection but to create truly predictive and personalized commerce experiences, anticipating a user’s needs before they even click “buy.” We will see a battle for the “super app” in the Western world, where payments are just one seamless feature within a broader ecosystem of financial and social services. For a company like PayPal, the challenge isn’t just to be a reliable way to pay; it’s to become an indispensable, intelligent partner in a consumer’s entire digital life.
