Alex Chriss has only been at the helm of PayPal (PYPL) for just over a year, but that hasn’t stopped the CEO from implementing a series of aggressive and transformative changes at the financial technology company. During his brief tenure, Chriss has shaken up PayPal’s management team, slowed down on acquisitions, tapped comedian Will Ferrell for PayPal’s largest-ever U.S. campaign and even ditched the company’s iconic blue logo—all in the past 13 months.
At the heart of his turnaround vision for PayPal is a desire to reinvigorate the 25-year-old company into one that goes beyond online payments. Despite serving some 400 million consumers and 35 million merchants, PayPal has “lost its way a little bit from an innovation standpoint,” Chriss said at the Fortune Global Forum yesterday (Nov. 11). To properly shake things up, the CEO spent the last year pushing a wider mindset refresh that transitions PayPal from “just a payments company” to one focused on commerce.
Armed with nearly two decades of experience working at tax software provider Intuit, Chriss, 47, joined PayPal last September with an eye on growth. “With the data we have, with the technology we have and with the talent we have, that’s an opportunity for us to expand,” he said. This sentiment has already led to valuable gains for PayPal, with the company’s current market cap of nearly $87 billion representing a more than 61 percent increase year-over-year.
Shortly after taking the reins from former CEO Dan Schulman, Chriss introduced a series of innovations to revolutionize the company’s approach to commerce. A new one-click checkout, for example, helps merchants avoid losing potential customers due to slow checkout processes. A revamped version of business profiles on Venmo, a mobile payments service and PayPal subsidiary, is aimed at helping small businesses engage with customers through profile rankings and promotional offers.
Like the rest of the world, PayPal is also embracing generative A.I.—a technology Chriss says the company has used for ten years to protect against risk and fraud. Through new A.I.-driven features like “Smart Receipts,” a form of personalized recommendations that merchants can send to clients, Chriss is hoping to help small businesses that wouldn’t usually have access to the data and research needed to succeed at utilizing A.I. Leveraging PayPal’s scale and information to aid merchants is “our opportunity and our responsibility, to be honest,” said Chriss.
While these new features are aimed at bolstering PayPal’s organic growth, the company’s inorganic growth (or ‘acquisitions’) will not be on the table for some time, according to Chriss. The PayPal head wants to pivot away from a previously bloated acquisition strategy and instead reevaluate services the CEO has described as a “drag to the business.” While PayPal pauses on purchasing companies to regain its footing and streamline operations, that doesn’t mean it is promising to swear off acquisitions altogether. “Inorganic growth is going to be an essential part of our long-term strategy—but at the same time, you have to earn the right to get into the market and find the right acquisitions,” said Chriss.