PayPal has been held back by eBay, its president said during a presentation to Wall Street on Wednesday. Dan Schulman was giving a sales pitch to investors, outlining PayPal’s skill sets and advantages as it readies to stand alone after the breakup with eBay.
He also offered reassurance to those who might be worried about the threat Apple Pay could pose to PayPal.
Not surprisingly Schulman talked about the importance of mobile to PayPal’s business, with one billion of its four billion transactions in 2014 coming from mobile. And PayPal has the data analytics and risk analytics skill sets along with regulatory know-how, he said.
He ticked off a list of PayPal advantages, including:
- brand that consumers trust;
- customer service (“we have 8,000 people in our company that do customer service”);
- a two-sided network (both merchants and consumers are necessary to scale);
- regulatory compliance;
- focus (“digital payments is the only thing that we do at PayPal. This is not a sideline for us.”)
Schulman also referenced the recent layoffs at PayPal – it was a difficult decision, but growth covers a lot of sins, he said.
PayPal will be fully focused on digital payments after the breakup. “There have been certain partners that have been loath to work with us because we were part of eBay and they considered eBay to be a competitor,” he said. “We are a neutral third party to merchants and we believe that we are extremely well positioned and very focused as we look at this digital payments future.”
Those interested in reading a transcript of the presentation can find it on SeekingAlpha.
The transcript is also available on the eBay Investor relations website along with Schulman’s slide presentation.
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