"In a long post on X, Marcus spoke about several flaws in PayPal, a San Jose-based fintech giant, across its history. Marcus left PayPal in 2014 and has since worked at Coinbase and Meta. He has also founded a payments company, Lightspark, where he is now CEO. He said he had woken up to messages from former PayPal colleagues, which pushed him to "finally speak up.""
"Marcus said "product conviction gave way to financial optimization" at PayPal. He compared PayPal with competitors like Apple Pay, Visa, Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay. He said PayPal has lagged behind on buy-now-pay-later payment features, adding that the company has leaned too heavily on unbranded checkouts and lost transaction volume on eBay. PayPal also made some bad acquisition bets, Marcus said, citing the online rewards company Honey and the financial services company Xoom as "a wrong fit for PayPal" and "unnecessary distractions.""
PayPal shifted focus from product conviction to financial optimization, weakening its competitive position. The company lagged on buy-now-pay-later capabilities and relied heavily on unbranded checkouts, reducing transaction volume on eBay. Acquisitions such as Honey and Xoom did not align with core payments operations and became distractions. Leadership hires emphasized software backgrounds rather than payments expertise, prompting departures of payments‑knowledgeable executives. The recent CEO change installs a leader from outside the payments industry, continuing a pattern of non-payments leadership. Recent earnings showed profit and sales misses, reflecting damaged operational focus and strategic alignment.
Read at Business Insider
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