Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
‘Innovators Playground’ is a podcast series where we explore the cutting-edge innovations and insights shaping the future of technology. It brings conversations with leading founders, industry experts, and thinkers to inspire and inform youth around the world.
DILIP
Welcome to Innovators Playground. In this podcast, we discuss some of the brilliant minds, how they are planning to shape the world. Today, we have our first global guest on this podcast. I'm delighted to welcome Alex Criss, President and CEO of Paypal. Alex leads one of the best payments company in the world. He has over two decades of experience of working in FinTech, payments, technology, and strategy areas. He has a unique expertise to ensure that the innovation meets the consumer needs. And I'm sure this podcast is going to be very exciting for our viewers.
Hi, Alex. Once again, thank you so much for doing this podcast with us. You run one of the largest payments tech company globally, which has US business, the global business. How do you run this together? What are your primary first principles or thinking while running this complex, large company?
ALEX
Well, first, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. You're right. We serve almost half a billion users around the world, small businesses, large enterprises, consumers. We'll move in the next year or two. We'll move $2 trillion around the world in over 200 markets.
But the reality is it still comes down to just the basics of your customer. What are the customers' needs? And so we try to stay as focused as we can on what we call working back, working customer back, and ensuring that whether it's a customer making a peer to peer payment, whether it's a consumer trying to buy something online or in person from a merchant, or whether it's a merchant trying to get paid a small business, trying to balance their cash flows, all of these are very critical but important tasks for us to stay focused on. So we keep distilling it down to what is the core customer problem we can solve really well.
DILIP
And now that PayPal is partnering with NPCI internationally, how do you see, while obviously you have a large presence globally. How do you see this is going to help PayPal? How does this partnership work out, do you think?
ALEX
Well, look, we see a vision of a world where it really becomes borderless when it comes to commerce. I mean, when we talk to our consumers, when we talk to a merchant, consumers are traveling all over the world. They don't want to have to think about what cash do I have, what wallet do I have, or how to make a purchase. They just want to live in the world. And when we talk to small businesses, they're constantly struggling to find new customers. And so if we can provide an ecosystem and a platform where we can start to bring together the biggest ecosystems in the world, the biggest payment players in the world, to create a frictionless experience for consumers and for merchants, what an incredible world to live in. And so I just see this opening up the world. I think when you think about all the technology, all the innovation, all the advancement that is happening around the world right now, it still is amazing to me how much friction there is in just payment processing as you move around the world. And I think what we're starting to do in this partnership is making it as frictionless and simple as possible.
DILIP
And as you rightly said, the friction in cross-border is very, very high. And still today, while we have the global card schemes, we have the wire networks, I still feel that there is a huge scope in redefining the whole cross-border experience. And what are the trends you are seeing? Or what are the trends PayPal is trying to look at in this rewiring of the cross-border? Yeah.
ALEX
Well, look, I think there's people that are traveling more. There's people that are moving and living in different areas where remittances is becoming a huge part of what we're seeing from a trend, where people just want to live anywhere in the world. And to be able to send money home without having to pay a huge tax when they do it because of a cross-border fee, yeah, that's a world that we want to live in. We're seeing trends in merchants that want to be able to ship and sell around the world. It used to be that if you opened a small business, your customers were your local community. Now we want you to be able to sell to the whole world. And so I just think we're seeing a much more global ecosystem.
DILIP
When I was actually trying to look at the PayPal current scale, and you spoke about half a billion users, so that way, NPCI and PayPal are very similar. You service about half a billion customers. We do service half a billion customers. We see daily active, about over 200 million now on some of the systems, especially the UPI. You spoke about $2 trillion. We do about close to $4 trillion this year from a rounded perspective. So very similar. So only barring the 200 countries, we would wish to be present like you. So, when you look at such a large-- when you're leading such a large organisation, what's your DNA? How does such a large workforce that the gig workers, the technology builders, the product, the customer service, what's your DNA? How do you define people's DNA?
ALEX
Well, first, it comes back to what I said earlier. We have to focus on the customer. And a lot of what focusing on the customer means is ensuring that we've earned the basics. So things like trust, safety, security, when you're working across hundreds of countries, there's regulations. There's different laws that we need to work through. There's the money movement where people-- look, money is the most sensitive, precious thing to most people's lives. Beyond their family, it's their money. And when you ask what stresses them out, it always comes down to money. And so we take that responsibility very seriously in everything that we do. And it's part of our DNA. When we take on the responsibility of, even if it's just me sending you $20 for a shared payment or of a shared meal we had, that's real money to somebody. And if we enable fraud or something to happen to that, we've broken the trust of our customers. And so much of what we do comes back to that trust, that safety, that security. But then on top of that, we have to innovate. We live in an incredibly dynamic world. And we want to innovate for our customers. We want to do the things that are going to make them excited about the future as well. So we have to balance those two things.
DILIP
I also keep... even within NPCI, how do we balance the stability? Because stability is so crucial. And we move-- we deal with the real money. And how do you continue to innovate? With whom do you compete, really? With whom do you fight to grow PayPal, in a sense?
ALEX
Some days, I feel like we compete with everybody. It's incredible. But what excites me is that we're in the centre of what's really important for the future. When everybody is trying to innovate and trying to create something special for customers, that's a good place to be. I never want to be in an area where there's no competition. That means you're probably not doing something very important. But look, we have a payment processing business. We have peer-to-peer businesses. We have commerce businesses for e-commerce. We're now doing agentic commerce and figuring out what the future of agentic commerce could look like. And there's players in every one of those areas. And then in each market we play in, there's local players that play there as well. What we try to do is play to our strengths, play to what is differentiated. And we have differentiation in scale, just like you do. And this is a complex market. And so if we can create complex situations and simplify it down so the consumer never has to think about it, they can make a cross-border payment or a cross-border transaction or interact with a wallet that they don't have to worry about what that translation looks like or the FX looks like or any of the challenges underneath, but they know it's safe and secure, then we're doing our job.
DILIP
No, no, fantastic. You spoke about the strengths. What do you think development areas could be? What do you think PayPal could have done better in the ideal world, if I may say so?
ALEX
We are constructively dissatisfied all the time. All the time. And I think that's healthy. I think you have to be. In a competitive world like this, you can get complacent if you start to really believe you're doing amazing just without having to do anything. So we are constructively dissatisfied all the time. I think a lot about velocity. I think a lot about how are we creating the future at the pace that our consumers and our merchants need us to.
I think about innovators' dilemmas a lot. We have a big business, right? We'll do 30 plus billion dollars of revenue next year. We have some big businesses that I constantly have to think about should we disrupt ourselves in order to deliver for customers. And so being bold, moving with velocity while creating the stability that our customers rely on us is something I think about a lot.
DILIP
This is like a reflection for us. Right. And I'm saying I feel like seeing in the mirror. Right. Because these are similar thoughts and not only in NPCI, but most of the leading institutions, regulators in India, I don't know how to position this, but, you know, as India, we are trying to compete with the world in that sense. We want to be really leading the innovation, the tech payments in the world. And I think very similar thoughts. I'm very glad to hear that, you know, we're not alone in that sense.
ALEX
And again, compete, you know, in some ways you want to compete because you want to create the best business dynamics, the best consumer dynamics for your population to be as successful as possible. But really, in my mind, what that means is you're actually just showing the world what's possible. And in many ways you have in many ways, what you've created is unbelievable. It is pointing to the future of what's possible when you bring an entire population together into a common platform. And so, you know, you can look at it as competition or you could look at it as leading the world, leading the way, shaping the way and shaping what the future should be. And I'll tell you, we take a lot of inspiration from what you've created. And I think, you know, what we're creating with PayPal World and the partnership has a lot to do with where you're leading and how we can bring that to the rest of the world.
DILIP
Absolutely right. And, you know, again, going back to the cross border and you remember our call, right, you know, we discussed and if there are G20 principles, which includes the access, the transparency to the user. And I think I'm very glad to see the architecture is actually coming up to fulfil all G20 principles, what they promise for a cross border transaction in that sense. Alex, you spoke about Asian tech and innovation. And today the US obviously is maybe far ahead on this whole AI stuff, building the large language models (LLM). You know, India is also trying to take some strides. But how is PayPal now kind of looking at agentic flows or AI in commerce and what are the actions which you guys have done to integrate LLMs into payments?
ALEX
Yeah. So, let's just talk about the evolution of commerce. Right. So again, it wasn't that long ago, maybe 30 years, 40 years ago, commerce was, you walked into a store. That was the only way you could buy. And you had cash in your hand and that's what you did. Maybe you had a credit card or something. We then moved to e-commerce where you can now buy online and then you can start to buy around the world. I watch my kids with their mobile phones and they're speaking to agents. And I think we're foolish to believe that agentic commerce is not going to happen within the next two, three, five years and probably sooner than we imagine. And so what will that look like? Well, so you'll be able to have a great conversation with one or multiple LLMs and then LLM should know who you are.
It should know something about you and it should be able to create a personalised journey. You're going to a wedding and it should know the location, the weather, all of the things that would allow you to find the right outfit, make the right travel plans, buy a present, a gift for the wedding, all of these different things. So that's actually a beautiful future. Now, what actually needs to happen in order for that to occur? Well, the LLM needs to know something about you. So there's safety and security of personalised information. Ideally, it knows some of your shopping history, which again, we know a lot of because we're tracking and you know, you shared a lot of that personalised information with us and we can anonymise it and share that. It needs to know how you like to purchase. So, you have maybe multiple instruments in your wallet. Maybe it's a credit card. Maybe it's a buy now, pay later. Maybe it's crypto in the future, right? There's lots of different ways that you might want to pay. And then it also needs to find all the different products. So, it needs to have access to a catalog.
Well, as AI goes up, fraud is going to go up. And so how does it make sure that what you're buying is actually from a merchant that has been verified. And how does that merchant know that you've been verified as a consumer? So, all the exciting vision of what agentic commerce should be is real and very tangible. The steps to get there are still complicated. You can't just say, okay, great, you know, give me my wonderful outfit for the wedding and not have tracking of how it's going to show up or be able to make a return. And so, all of those things now happen. All of those things now have to be built into the workflow as well. And so, you know, it's coming, but, you know, this is where we look at our responsibility as protecting the consumer, working with the merchant, as really figuring out how to make that beautiful vision a reality. Yeah.
DILIP
Alex, if you just double click on that vision, and I get what you're saying, that you're saying that, you know, there's a standard level one use case, which I think we have solved for. And I think the level two and level three is coming up now, which has a component of me as a consumer and my choices and my likings or the desires, which the AI would know, and then integrating back to get the best of the possible merchants which are safe and secure and marry that together, right? To get the catalog, discovery and everything. So, has PayPal started actually stitching this up? You have MCPs and you have started building this up to really at least start solving it. It may not be the best possible solution right now, but at least started some wiring onto this.
ALEX
Yeah, we have. And we were first to market with a remote MCP server that connected our both consumer and merchant back in so that LLMs could start to tap into it. We've partnered with some of the largest LLMs out there. We've actually just launched with Perplexity, the ability to do agentic shopping and agentic commerce. I'll tell you one of the things that's important to me. It goes back to something we talked about earlier, which is, you know, in an agentic commerce world, it's going to be very easy for the largest merchants likely to open up their catalog and for LLMs to find from the largest merchants. But what happens to the small business? What happens to the micro business that's just selling just a handful of bespoke custom goods, how will they get their products and services into that LLM? And so that's something we think a lot about.
We have over 40 million merchants around the world that are PayPal partners. And we feel a responsibility. It's a privilege and a responsibility to serve them. And even as the future moves to an agentic world, we have to make sure that they are brought along for the journey and that they're not left behind because they don't have the resources, the data scientists, the marketing team to be able to go in and figure out how to how to live in this world. So I think we're going to and all of us are going to have to partner together as leaders of commerce to make sure that the long tail of small business providers are brought along in this journey.
DILIP
I think it's a great point. And I could also create a more level playing field for the smaller merchants to come up to the curve, use some of the generic stuff like MCP. You built an MCP of your own. And I'm sure India is also now, Indian tech companies are also building up a few of them. And actually it could it's all about, you know, how are you able to publish? Right. How are you able to publish your value to the world? And I think AI can bring that closer.
ALEX
I hope so. But again, we're going to have to create that. Right. We know how to publish it today. You can create a website. The Internet enabled the ability for someone to create and publish their store and then to make it discoverable. And you can, you know, there's a variety of ways to make your store discoverable. You could imagine a world where stores don't exist. Right. And your store is your catalog of information that an LLM is consuming. So we have to make those on-ramps tangible and we have to be intentional about it.
DILIP
I think it's a great point that, you know, and I'm sure LLMs over the period would also figure out to look at the incremental change management or incremental data from this merchant so that the inventory and everything is accurate. I think it's going to be that we're looking towards an exciting future.
ALEX
I agree.
DILIP
When we talk about payments and you have been very vocal about it since the beginning. The safety trust is paramount, right? Because even though you're doing more than twenty dollars from one user to the other, it's twenty dollars and could be hard on money. How do you really deal with some of the issues in terms of customer service and also the frauds, the data privacy and a variety of other things? Do they really bother you as a CEO of PayPal, one of the largest payments company?
ALEX
Every day. I mean, we think about this every day and we have, you know, I'm blessed to have an incredible team that works behind me. And it's everyone from our engineers to our data scientists, to our risk analysts, to our customer service agents. Everyone is working all day every day to ensure that our customers and our merchants are safe and secure. You know, and sometimes that requires us to add some friction to the process. And, you know, I'm someone who loves building products. I love building frictionless experiences. But sometimes you need to verify someone's identity.
DILIP
Yeah.
ALEX
Sometimes you need to make sure that, you know, you know, you are who you say you are to make sure that when a payment is made, it's actually going to go through. Sometimes if, you know, we have our algorithms where if you get a payment request coming out of your account that is anomalous and looks very strange, we need to have risk rules that immediately are saying, hey, you know, slow down a second. We want to make sure you're protected. And sometimes, I mean, I get emails from passionate customers every day where they're upset because we held their money or we did something. And, you know, I respond to them first, apologise, and then also explain, hey, here's why we did what we do. We're protecting you. And, you know, it's unfortunate that sometimes it adds friction, but I'd rather err on the side of caution and make sure that your money is safe then and you have to wait an extra day, which again is not ideal, but is better than a fraudster taking your money. And so we're just constantly having to find that right balance.
DILIP
No, I agree. And, you know, a number of times this the speed breakers, if I may call, so you create to slow down, right, because the payments are now super-fast. So, it does hurt. And that's where the false positive and the model accuracy is something which again will improve with the data. But I agree. I think there is no other choice but to create some small friction to ensure that the consumers are protected.
ALEX
Well, what you just said is really important because we're moving more and more and more towards instant payment, instant money movement. And when there's instant, all it takes is a little bit of bad actors to get into the system and a lot can go wrong. And so just, you know, it's a constant battle, but it's also the responsibility we take on when, you know, you and I both lead very large platforms.
DILIP
Alex, if you know, the US has opened up the Stablecoins now and, you know, how do you see that is going to impact or that is going to change, especially the payments part of it? Do you think it would impact at all or what role do you feel they will play in the US or the global financial services business?
ALEX
Yeah. So, look, I am very passionate about continuing to evolve our technology and continuing to evolve the underlying infrastructure of payments. So, this is a good thing. Now, you know, when you have a hammer, not everything's a nail. And so, this isn't going to solve every problem. And, you know, domestic payments in the US, they work. They work pretty well. So that's not the first place that we're going to go. Look, cross border payments are slow. They're expensive. And we look at stablecoins as a real opportunity to start to experiment to figure out, can we solve some customer problems in a better way? And so we have our own Stablecoin. It's called PYUSD. It is a Stablecoin that's been around for over a year. It's safe, it's secure, and it's one that we're now enabling merchants for B2B payments that are cross border or for consumer to merchant payments that are cross border to start to do at, you know, 90 percent discount to normal cross border fees, which is a huge win, huge win for customers. And it can be instant as well. And so, I think it will take time to evolve. But, you know, as a leader in the payments world, I want us to lean into innovation and lean into the future of technology because I just think it's better for our customers. So, we're excited about Stablecoin. It's not going to solve every problem day one, but we're going to experiment particularly on cross border.
DILIP
Alex, we work very closely. And as you rightly said, India has taken a bet on CBDC. When we do the international transactions with our subsidiary and IPL, I think the currency conversion costs are about 50 percent of the overall transaction cost. And I think it's a huge margin there. And I think it's all up to this whole inefficient correspondent banking story. And if we are able to get the sender and beneficiary on a single chain, as you said, using the Stablecoins, you could do instant real time transfers.
ALEX
But this goes back to innovators' dilemma. There's a lot of players that make money in this ecosystem. And I think, you know, I take responsibility as a leader in this space to lean into what the customer needs, not the margin that I can make on the complexity of cost. If we now have a system that can reduce complexity, reduce costs, improve delight for our customers, and it comes at a fraction of the margin for me, I look at that as an opportunity to scale around the globe. And so, we want to lean into that. But I know that's not necessarily shared by everybody. So, this will be the but look, at the end of the day, when you solve customer problems, it usually works out pretty well.
DILIP
Yeah, I think so. If you keep the customer at the centre, right, and I think in the short term, I agree with you, it might have those problems. But over the period, I think the scale will ensure that it pays off. You spend a lot of time at Intuit and, you know, would you like to spend a couple of minutes talking about how did it contribute to your professional journey?
ALEX
So, to tell you a bit of the story, before any of this, I was an entrepreneur. I had two startups, tech startups that I did. And I figured I would just continue. I loved innovating. I loved solving problems. I loved being an entrepreneur. But I also, when you do your own startups, you learn you're a small business owner. And you learn how hard it is sometimes to manage cashflow, to make payroll, and you deal with the stresses of being a small business owner.
I joined Intuit and Intuit has a couple of parts of its business. One is domestic tax filing for the US. And then the larger part is QuickBooks, which serves small businesses. And I had the opportunity for almost two decades to work in the small business group, lead the small business group. And it was very fulfilling for me because, you know, I knew firsthand how hard it is to be a small business and I got the opportunity to build products and services that could solve money in, money out, access to capital, cashflow issues for small businesses. And, you know, for me, small businesses are, you know, everything from micro businesses through to small and medium sized businesses, they're, they're the lifeblood of our communities. They are hiring, you know, the majority of employees in our communities. They're providing back, they're creating bespoke, exciting products and services. So I've dedicated the last 20 years of my life to serve them. And then it was one of the reasons I joined PayPal was because it's just another level of, you know, 40 million small business merchants around the world on a true global scale, really helping them grow their business. So that's been a passion of mine for many, many years now.
DILIP
And how do you see the technology has really played a central stage while at Intuit or at PayPal? How do you look at technology, this whole AI story, the whole other distributed systems and, you know, the fraud algorithms and, you know, the consumer experience is changing dramatically now with this whole technology because our technology change, people are able to build apps now minutes versus the months and years. So how do you see technology has played around in your journey?
ALEX
You know, I'm a technologist at heart. And so I, I believe in, in leaning in and creating, you know, the better technology creates more opportunities. And I think we're starting to see that, you know, if I think back, one of the, one of the businesses that I was, I had the opportunity to create in my previous role was around self-employed, around solopreneurs.
And if you look at the technology platforms that have been created, whether it's food delivery or ride sharing or platforms so that you can, you know, do, do bespoke designs online or coding online, these have now created millions, millions and millions of new jobs and opportunities for people to work from home or use their car or their, their bike to be able to provide for their families. And so, I look at this technology evolution as creating more and more opportunities and creating more and more businesses, more and more income opportunities for people. And, you know, it's the same thing as we were touching on earlier with AI. You know, I think if we're intentional and there are platforms like ours that are out there serving these, these businesses, we will create more opportunities, more opportunities for individuals to provide for their families by creating businesses that work. And so, I think technology is creating those opportunities and we just have to keep being intentional about it.
DILIP
Fantastic. When we look at the future, what are your top, maybe one or two priorities for the next two, three years time, if you may share with us?
ALEX
You know, I think we've hit on a few things. We've hit, hit on crypto, we've hit on agentic commerce, we've hit on global interconnected payment systems. None of us know what the future is going to be. None of us. We know the technologies that are exciting. We know where we're leaning in, but staying agile, staying customer focused and being able to move with velocity are the things that I'm personally thinking about. I want to lean into whatever the future holds and be, you know, leverage the scale and the amazing talent that we have at PayPal to create a future that I think is good for our customers. And so there's no roadmap for what we're leading through right now. And it's moving so fast that I think you're kidding yourself. If you think you know exactly how it's going to play out, you've just got to be aggressive leaning in and be agile and being able to, to adjust as needed. But boy, it's an exciting time.
I mean, every day I feel like I wake up and learning something new and having to adjust to new information, having to, you know, understand from the world around me what others are creating and then how that impacts our business, our customers, our employees. So, it's a very dynamic, challenging, exciting and fulfilling time.
DILIP
I also keep saying the same thing to our teams that make daily progress. We'll win the world. Just make daily progress. You know, don't waste a day. Don't waste a day. Now that we partner Alex in NPCI, NIPL and PayPal, I'm sure we could do more. I'm sure we could do more. I believe that this global cross-connect is just the first step of our partnership and we at NPCI are super excited about this and, and I hope we are able to do great things together.
ALEX
I think this is a groundbreaking partnership and I think it's something, as you said, that is just the beginning. I think our customers are going to lead us towards the future. I think they're going to start transacting and demanding interactions that we couldn't have even imagined ourselves, but I just truly believe in, in a truly global commerce world. And I think we can be the platforms that can make that happen. So, I'm very, very excited.
DILIP
Yeah. And, and you know, the regulator in India is very progressive. They have just released the new cross-border guidelines and, I'm sure being fully compliant, I think we can layer up more services over and above this standard cross-border payments. And I, I'm very excited about this. Thank you so much for partnering with us. And, I feel really privileged. PayPal is a known brand to many of the Indian FinTechs, technologists and, very glad to see that finally we have partnered.
ALEX
Oh, this is an incredible partnership and just the beginning, as you said.
DILIP
What's your advice to the young entrepreneur who's just starting his own venture startup into his world?
ALEX
What a fun time to start, to start something. I, having been an entrepreneur myself, I encourage anyone, if you have that itch, scratch it, because you'll, you'll regret it if you don't. What I'd say is that technology is moving so fast. The way you will be successful or not is if you fall in love with the customer's problem, not your solution, but the customer's problem. And if you can just maniacally focus on solving that problem and work and work and work at it, you've got a good chance of success.
DILIP
How do you like to spend your time? When you're not working, is what I mean.
ALEX
I have, I spend as much time as I can with my family. I have three amazing sons that are at different stages of their lives. Two are now off at university. And, you know, they still need their dad every once in a while for some advice. And my youngest is at home starting high school. And, you know, now that there's just one, one at home, I get, he gets a lot of attention from me. So, spend time with them. I enjoy cooking. So, try to, it's a good, good way to stress relief. I find, you know, these jobs, as you know, are all consuming. And so, if you can make a beautiful meal for friends and family, it's a good way to turn off your brain and then, you know, get some workouts in every once in a while. That's about it. I try to keep it pretty simple.
DILIP
If I have to give you a choice between networking dinner or cooking a meal, because I was told cooking is one of your favourite activities, which one would you choose?
ALEX
Cooking a meal all day long. Networking dinners are fine, but exhausting. I'll tell you, after a day of work, it's very difficult to go to a networking event. I'd much rather just cook a meal.
DILIP
We are fairly similar, I can say that. One book that you recommend to our viewers.
ALEX
You know, I mentioned the Innovators Dilemma. I think it's a great one, especially in this time with existing businesses. I'll give you a Netflix series as well. And I think it would be good if you, as it ties back to cooking, there's a series on Netflix called A Chef's Table. And every episode they look at a restaurant and a famous chef from around the world and just follow how passionate these chefs are at creating incredible experiences for the customers. If you care about customer obsession, watch this show because you will learn what true customer obsession is, delighting the customer that shows up and serving them the most magical meal you could imagine. If you can translate that to a technology innovation, it's one of the most inspiring shows I've watched.
DILIP
One of the best comparisons I've heard. Thank you so much.
ALEX
Thank you.
DILIP
I hope you enjoyed the conversation. Please let us know your feedback in the comment section.