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The 2016 Tech 50: Dan Schulman

The PayPal president and CEO debuts at No. 29 on our annual Tech 50 ranking.

29
Dan Schulman
President and Chief Executive Officer
PayPal Holdings
PNR

Founded in 1998 and an eBay subsidiary from October 2002 until its July 2015 IPO, PayPal had a stellar first quarter of 2016: Revenue rose 23 percent from the year-earlier period, to $2.54 billion, while payment transactions jumped 26 percent, to 1.41 billion, and active customer accounts 11 percent, to 184 million. But another metric that excites president and CEO Dan Schulman these days is transactions per account per year — 28 as of the first quarter, three more than in 2015. “What we really aspire to is to go from a PayPal customer using PayPal twice a month to using us twice a week,” says Schulman, 58, who was American Express Co.’s president of enterprise growth before joining San Jose, California–based PayPal in 2014. He believes the key to greater customer engagement is mobility as more mobile-centric merchants come onto the platform. During 2015, 1.4 billion, or 28 percent, of PayPal’s 4.9 billion total payments were initiated on mobile devices. The CEO sees growth potential in reaching the 2 billion people who don’t have bank accounts. Schulman says PayPal “has a unique opportunity to make a massive difference in people’s lives by democratizing payments and helping millions of people around the world move and manage their money more securely, reliably and affordably” as the lines separating traditional banking, mobile banking and commerce continue to blur. This emerging “digital commerce and money” sector could be worth $100 trillion, says Schulman, who formerly served as founding CEO of Virgin Mobile USA, president and CEO of Priceline Group and president of AT&T’s consumer markets division. To help customers navigate the changing payments landscape, PayPal will transition from being a button on a website to “a platform that enables innovative and seamless buying experiences wherever user communities are actively engaged,” Schulman says. The company has been on the acquisition trail — last year it bought mobile commerce start-up Modest for an undisclosed sum and money transfer provider Xoom Corp. for $890 million — and this April it led a $30 million funding round for investment app developer Acorns.

Visit The 2016 Tech 50: Making Financial Services Faster, Cheaper, Bigger for more.


The 2016 Tech 50

1. Catherine
Bessant
Bank of America Corp.
2. Jeffrey Sprecher
Intercontinental Exchange
3. Lance Uggla
Markit
4. Phupinder Gill
CME Group
5. Shawn Edwards and Vlad Kliatchko
Bloomberg
6. R. Martin Chavez
Goldman Sachs Group
7. Robert Goldstein
BlackRock
8. Adena Friedman
Nasdaq
9. Deborah Hopkins
Citi Ventures
10. Daniel Coleman
KCG Holdings
11. Stephen Neff
Fidelity Investments
12. David Craig
Thomson Reuters
13. Michael Spencer
ICAP
14. Michael Bodson
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
15. Charles Li
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
16. Chris Concannon
BATS Global Markets
17. Blythe Masters
Digital Asset Holdings
18. David Rutter
R3CEV
19. Neil Katz
D.E. Shaw & Co.
20. Lee Olesky
Tradeweb Markets
21. Richard McVey
MarketAxess Holdings
22. Seth Merrin
Liquidnet Holdings
23. Robert Alexander
Capital One Financial Corp.
24. Brad Katsuyama
IEX Group
25. Antoine Shagoury
State Street Corp.
26. David Gledhill
DBS Bank
27. Lou Eccleston
TMX Group
28. Andreas Preuss
Deutsche BÖrse
29. Dan Schulman
PayPal Holdings
30. Scott Dillon
Wells Fargo & Co.
31. Mike Chinn
S&P Global Market Intelligence
32. Craig Donohue
Options Clearing Corp.
33. Gary Norcross
Fidelity National Information Services
34. Steven O'Hanlon
Numerix
35. Sebastián Ceria
Axioma
36. Michael Cooper
BT Radianz
37. Tyler Kim
MaplesFS
38. Neal Pawar
AQR Capital Management
39. David Harding
Winton Capital Management
40. Chris Corrado
London Stock Exchange Group
41. Brian Conlon
First Derivatives
42. Jim Minnick
eVestment
43. Stephane Dubois
Xignite
44. Mazy Dar
OpenFin
45. Yasuki Okai
NRI Holdings America
46. Kim Fournais
Saxo Bank
47. Jock Percy
Perseus
48. Robert Schifellite
Broadridge Financial Solutions
49. Brian Sentance
Xenomorph Software
50. Pieter van der Does
Adyen

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