When Alex Chriss took over the reins at PayPal from outgoing CEO Dan Schulman in late 2023, he set out a technology-focused vision based around tools like AI and stablecoins. Barely two years later, that vision has come up short as PayPal on Tuesday announced it was pushing out Chriss in favor of board chairman Enrique Lores, who is currently CEO of HP. The move comes after Chriss failed to halt a slide in PayPal’s share price, which is down around 80% from five years ago, and as the company predicted lower earnings for 2026.
In a statement, PayPal made clear it was replacing Chriss due to poor performance, stating, “The pace of change and execution was not in line with the Board’s expectations.”
The appointment of Lores appears to have done little to reassure the market, which reacted to the glum earnings news with a further sell-off, sending PayPal shares down around 17% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the news of Lores’s departure reportedly blindsided HP, which named board member Bruce Broussard, a former CEO of Humana, as its interim leader.
PayPal’s shares are currently trading around $42, which is a far cry from 2021 when the stock reached its all-time high of $308. During this time, the company—which once dominated online commerce—saw a growing list of competitors, including Apple and Stripe, erode its core payment and checkout business. Despite having massive global distribution and key products like Venmo, PayPal has been unable to hit on a strategy to keep pace.
In a December interview with Fortune, Chriss acknowledged that PayPal confronted a “classic innovator’s dilemma” situation as it sought to defend its longtime checkout and peer-to-peer payment business lines, while finding new ways to compete.
Shortly before Chriss took over as CEO, PayPal launched its own stablecoin—one of the buzziest areas of fintech at the moment—but the token, known as PYUSD, has failed to gain any significant market share. Currently, the total market cap for PYUSD is around $3.5 billion compared to approximately $70 billion for USDC, the U.S. market leader that is backed by Circle and Coinbase.
Lores, the incoming CEO, will formally begin his PayPal tenure on March 1, while the company’s Chief Financial and Operating Officer Jamie Miller will lead the company in the interim. In a statement, Lores only spoke of his plans for the company in broad strokes.
“We will further strengthen the culture of innovation necessary to deliver long-term transformation and balance this with near-term delivery, executing with greater speed and precision, and holding ourselves accountable for consistent delivery quarter on quarter, to further assert PayPal’s industry leadership position,” said Lores.
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