Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
PayPal Holdings Inc. early Tuesday announced it has appointed board chairman Enrique Lores president and chief executive, replacing Alex Chriss. Lores moves into his new position after more than six years as CEO at HP Inc. The company also reported December-quarter results in the face of a steep drop in its share price over the past two weeks.
As Lores moves into his new role, Jamie Miller, chief financial and operating officer, is taking on the position of interim CEO, PayPal said, adding that long-time board member David Dorman is now the independent board chair.
The board thanked Chriss, who came from Intuit Inc. to take over as CEO two-and-a-half years ago, crediting him particularly for acting to monetize PayPal’s Venmo business and expand its buy now, pay later franchise. But in her remarks, Miller pointed to several weaknesses at PayPal that underlie its performance.
“Our execution is not what it needs to be,” she noted, adding that the company’s efforts in online branded checkout have fallen short. Here, she said, “we were too optimistic.” Branded checkout represents cases in which customers consciously choose PayPal at checkout as their payment method, in contrast to cases when PayPal processes transactions in the background.
Chriss made branded checkout a top priority upon his arrival at PayPal to replace long-time CEO Dan Schulman. But growth in online branded checkout transactions in the quarter slipped to 1% from 6% a year earlier, according to numbers PayPal presented Tuesday.
Miller blamed the slowdown on “retail weakness” in the U.S. market as well as “international headwinds, particularly in Germany,” adding, “we haven’t executed as we planned to.” She stressed that PayPal “has the right playbook,” though “it’s just not deployed in all the right places.”
She also said PayPal will stress rewards as a means to improve counts of returning customers. “Overall, we’re focused on execution as we move through 2026. We expect these initiatives to deliver progress,” she said, noting that branded “experiences” overall increased 4% in total payment volume in the fourth quarter, “despite challenges with branded checkout.”
The arrival of Lores will have an almost immediate impact, Miller predicted. With a new CEO, she said, “our focus right now is on transforming this business.”
For the quarter, PayPal posted $475 billion in total payment volume, up 9% year-over-year. That capped off a fiscal year in which volume climbed 7% to $1.79 trillion. But active accounts grew only 1%, to 439 million, while the number of payment transactions per active account slipped 5% to 57.7. Revenue for the quarter grew 4% to $8.67 billion. For the fiscal year, revenue was also up 4%, to $33.2 billion.
