How PayPal's CEO Is Planning to Go It Alone and Fix the Payments Giant -- WSJ

By Ben Glickman

PayPal's new chief executive, Enrique Lores, is mapping out his plans for going it alone rather than selling the company for more than $50 billion. Wall Street, so far, isn't crazy about it.

Lores, in the job now for just over six months, wants to remake parts of the business that have been lackluster for years, launch new features and slash billions of dollars in costs. He will have to do it amid fierce competition in a rapidly changing payment industry, where PayPal has long broken new ground but recently failed to capitalize.

Central to his plan is turning Venmo, the popular payments app that generates meager profits, into a one-stop money-management app, with tools for consumers to keep budgets and invest.

For the legacy PayPal checkout button, which consumers can use to pay for goods across the internet, he wants to offer better rewards and improve the user experience, thereby increasing usage that has plateaued since Apple Pay and Google Wallet became the dominant digital wallets.

His plan will be under pressure from shareholders who earlier this summer were looking at a chance to cash out. Rival Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International had lobbed an offer to buy all of PayPal valued at about $60.50 a share. Shares jumped on the news, and several Wall Street analysts thought the deal was compelling, given PayPal's recent results and battered stock price.

But a deal hasn't materialized as the sides remained far apart on price. The stock, which had touched above $62, has dropped back down to $53 a share. It is always possible deal talks could restart.

On Wednesday, Lores delivered his elevator pitch on the new PayPal for the first time since reports the talks had stalled.

"What we have done is to first look at the strategy that we have, have confidence in the strategy that we have, and use this as a benchmark to compare any other alternatives," Lores said.

"They trade like a melting ice cube," said Sanjay Sakhrani, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. "The investment community is suspect because they just haven't executed for a long time."

Lores, 61 years old, spent decades at HP and its predecessor, Hewlett-Packard. He started as an engineer and rose through the ranks, eventually leading several divisions before taking over and designing the company's breakup.

Previously chair of PayPal, he was thrust into the CEO role in February to the surprise of analysts and some investors.

The unsolicited offer from Advent and Stripe immediately complicated the calculus. In a sign of the value PayPal's management viewed as possible, Lores's compensation targets call for a $25 million bonus if he gets the stock above $68, on average, for 60 days. He could stand to make more than $60 million if the stock averages $125.

Boosting the stock will likely require success on several fronts, including convincing customers that Venmo is more than just an app to pay your friends.

Since 2021 Venmo has offered crypto trading-allowing users to buy bitcoin and other coins with their balances. Now they can store their money in its in-house stablecoin, PYUSD, and earn rewards akin to interest. It has long had debit and credit cards as well.

Lores has told investors that he envisions Venmo as similar to financial-services apps like SoFi and Chime, which allow users to send and receive money, budget, and save and invest in stocks or other assets.

Venmo plans to launch a buy-now-pay-later function in the near future, the company has said. And it has three planned product launches in the next year, according to an investor presentation, though it hasn't detailed what those products will be.

Cash App, owned by Jack Dorsey's Block, and trading platform Robinhood have already added banking features in their apps.

Revolut, a huge digital-banking app in Europe that has garnered praise from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, is expanding in the U.S., and last week regulators granted conditional approval to its application to become a national bank.

Chime, meanwhile, this week said it would acquire Stride Bank and its national banking charter, allowing it to make its own loans without a partner.

PayPal's December application for a state charter in Utah is pending.

Venmo's large existing user base, which trends younger and more affluent, gives it an advantage over competitors, analysts have said. But questions about executing a difficult turnaround will linger over the stock, they say.

"The path forward for PayPal, either under Stripe's ownership or as a stand-alone company, we believe will be a bumpy one," Truist analysts wrote recently.

Write to Ben Glickman at ben.glickman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 11, 2026 12:07 ET (16:07 GMT)