PayPal’s monthslong search for a CEO has come to an end with the appointment of Intuit executive Alex Chriss.
The search had been going on since February 2023, and was led by PayPal’s Board as well as an appointed CEO search committee. Chriss, meanwhile, had been at Intuit for 19 years as they’ve taken on acquisitions of Mailchimp and expanded offerings from QuickBooks.
“With his depth of experience in product development, his passion for serving customers and his longstanding commitment to empowering and enabling small businesses, and his proven track record of developing and inspiring his team, Alex is the perfect leader to take PayPal forward and accelerate the company’s growth opportunities,” John Donahoe, Chair of the PayPal Board of Directors, said in a press release. “The Board search committee worked diligently and thoroughly to find the right candidate to take PayPal into its next stage of growth and expansion, and we are confident Alex is that person.”
Below, we’ve rounded-up five things to know about Chriss and his new role at PayPal.
Chriss will officially begin on September 27. He replaces PayPal’s long-standing CEO, Dan Schulman, who had been in the role since the company’s split from eBay in 2015. According to the company’s press release, Schulman will remain on the board until its annual stockholder’s meeting, which will take place in May 2024.
Chriss comes from Intuit, where he was most recently the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intuit’s Small Business and Self-Employed Group. While Chriss has led the small business arm for five years, he’s spent a total of 19 years at Intuit, where he worked in various departments at increasing levels of leadership. As the head of the small business segment, Chriss “grew its customers and revenues at a compound annual growth rate of 20% and 23%, respectively,” according to PayPal’s press release.
His background in helping small businesses aligns with PayPal’s foray into the world of cryptocurrencies. The fact that he has taken the lead on helping huge companies like Intuit better serve small businesses is certainly one of the reasons he was tapped for the role. PayPal has recently launched a new cryptocurrency that’s backed by dollar deposits, U.S. treasuries and cash equivalents, making the form of investing more accessible to individuals. People can use PayPal USD to make peer-to-peer payments and purchases, and they can convert it to PayPal’s other supported cryptocurrencies. This falls in line with Chriss’s former areas of focus that aim to provide individuals with more control over their financial futures.
He led Intuit’s acquisition of Mailchimp. Chriss headed-up Inuit’s $12 billion acquisition of the email marketing platform Mailchimp, which expanded the company’s platform to a younger generation of professionals.
In addition to unanimous support from the board, the search team met with 20 investors as they conducted the search. Chriss was chosen from a pool of nine candidates, and it’s clear that he was thoroughly vetted by multiple investors and key stakeholders.
