I am a huge mixed martial arts practitioner.
We're trying to democratise financial services, to ensure that management and movement of money is a right for all citizens, not the privilege of the affluent.
When we were associated with eBay, it was surprising to me how many merchants were very reluctant to work with PayPal because we were accessing their data and their information, and they felt in some way, shape, or form they were competing with eBay.
Monetizing by creating more value for a Venmo user makes a ton of sense to me. But other forms of monetization that are more intrusive, like in advertising or something like that, the jury is really still out for me.
It's so hard to predict the political environment. I think that business can't sit on the sidelines and just watch. I think we need to be a force for the values that we believe in. We need to partner with government and regulators.
A lot of people say that I'm an activist CEO. I just think I'm a responsible leader of a business.
We cannot just rely on the public sector or the private sector. We all need to work together.
What we want to do to monetize Venmo is to add more and more capabilities. Anywhere you see a PayPal merchant, you can click on that button and actually use your Venmo account to check out at that merchant. Then we'll monetize that transaction exactly the same way we monetize a PayPal transaction.
My team and I tried cashing checks at check-cashing places and paying bills by money order. It's incredibly inconvenient and time-consuming - it's practically a part-time job just to manage and move your money.
In addition to my job at American Express, I'm also chairman of the board of Symantec, one of the leading players in anti-virus and cyber-crime prevention software, so I know firsthand just how sophisticated many of these attacks can be.
Software is eating the financial services industry. We have a large addressable market for PayPal to play in.
I think that the world is going to remain a very interconnected place. I don't think there's any getting away from that. The Internet has brought us closer together. I think cross-border trade is going to continue to grow substantially. I think there may be certain trade agreements that can be renegotiated, one way or another.
Physical money, whether it's checks or cash or credit card, are digitizing in front of us.
We had grown too fast at PayPal. Our operating expenses had grown too fast... Growth covers a lot of sin. We want to grow without sin.
Digital payments have already made it easier to move and manage money. While there's more work to do, the potential is real and understood.
The digitisation of money, the rapid expansion of internet access and, of course, the adoption of mobile phones have created the perfect conditions to make it easier, secure, and affordable to save, spend, give, and borrow.
As CEO, I believe my most important job is to both define reality and inspire hope for the PayPal team. Defining reality includes being realistic about all the things that could go wrong so that we are prepared to navigate those challenges.
Managing and moving your money should be a right, not a privilege. This isn't about banking the unbanked. It's about re-imagining what consumer retail banking can be.
There is absolutely no room for discrimination against anyone in our country or anywhere in world.
My mom pushed me in a baby carriage at Martin Luther King rallies. My grandfather was a union organizer. And to me, there is no room - no room - for discrimination of any kind. To me, it's just an anathema.
