PayPal CEO Alex Chriss joined CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” host David Faber to reveal more about its Innovation Day on January 25th, which he had teased on Tuesday, inviting followers on LinkedIn to join him for an exclusive preview of the first innovations PayPal and Venmo were piloting and bringing to market this year, “innovations that we believe will change commerce as we know it.”
Chriss told Faber in Wednesday’s interview, “We have over 35 million merchants that are using PayPal,” he said. “When we improve their conversion rate, it improves their business, it improves our bottom line – we’re kicking things off on the 25th.”
Faber probed to see if Chriss would provide more information about the company’s forthcoming announcements on the 25th.
The PayPal CEO responded, “For our merchants, we have the ability to leverage AI, to deliver an incredible improvement in their conversion rates, and then, we have to let our small businesses and our consumers connect, leveraging AI-driven personalization.”
Chriss got a little more specific about one area, telling Faber, “Advertising costs have gone up 2X over the last few years, we need to be able to give them the opportunity to leverage the data that they have and improve their business.”
In response to statements from the CNBC host that Wall Street analysts weren’t loving PayPal’s stock, Chriss said, “I love being an underdog” and said PayPal will “shock the world.”
Some of his followers on LinkedIn commented on Chriss’s post about the CNBC interview that they were hoping PayPal would include news about innovations involving digital currencies.
You can watch the full interview on CNBC. PayPal will be broadcasting Innovation Day next Thursday on its YouTube channel.
