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In today's episode, Ryan Zauk sits down with PayPal President & CEO Alex Chriss.

Alex took over as PayPal CEO in September 2023 after a nearly 20-year run at Intuit. Today, Alex (and PayPal) are sitting at the epicenter of some of the biggest trends in global technology & commerce.

Since joining PayPal less than two years ago, his tenure has turned several heads in the industry. PayPal seems reinvigorated and on the offensive, working to take advantage of the several platform shifts we're seeing in global technology and commerce. Alex has made new hires, reorganized the company, led startup-like release cycles, launched Will Ferrell branding campaigns, and so much more.

Alex comes on the show at the perfect time as he approaches the 2-year mark in his tenure and his bold vision for PayPal is turning into reality.

Let's visit a few highlights below:

On Facing The Innovator's Dilemma as PayPal's CEO

 "I invoke Innovator's Dilemma probably twice a week inside of the organization. First it's a mindset. Second, it's the thing that gets us the most excited because yes, will we disrupt potential revenue pools that we have today. Absolutely. The size of the prize is much larger than where we're playing today.... And so there's always that challenge of what are you going to disrupt? I'm looking for how we are going to 10x the position that we're in right now, and in order to do that, let's play bigger games. Let's be willing to disrupt ourselves."

On Turning Around a Global Giant Like PayPal as a New Leader

Coming to a new org at a crucible moment to shake things up is no easy feat...how did Alex do it? First - set the tone early so the board knows what they are signing up for with you.

“ The conversation I had when they hired me was if you're looking for a caretaker to just continue the business, please don't choose me. I am not that. That is not the role that I want and that's not what I'm good at.

  If you want someone that's going to transform and compete and figure out what the future looks like, that's what gets me jumping outta bed every morning.”

And what did that look like tactically on the ground once he started? Alex went on a comprehensive listening tour, meeting with global customers, investors, partners, and leaders. He looked to understand what PayPal's secret sauce was, what people wanted to change, and what stakeholders thought was holding them back...

"And then at some point you gotta put your stamp on it and you gotta have some conviction, write it down and say - This is the direction we're gonna go."

On Rebuilding PayPal "Customer Back"

When speaking to current PayPal employees, I heard one phrase that came up more than any other - customer back. What is customer back?

"When we talk about customer back, it's ensuring that the customers are actually at the root of everything that we do. That they're the ones that have a seat at the table when we're making decisions...

Organizing customer back was one of the first moves that we made. So when I came in, we reorganized PayPal so that we actually were serving our consumer base, our small business base, and our enterprise base/large merchants. Each of them has very different needs.

And so [we want] a general manager and a product leader who's thinking about what the specific needs are...and how am I building products and services to be able to deliver them?"

On Agentic Commerce

Alex and I spend a lot of time on agentic commerce in this episode. We talked through the big opportunities/challenges for each side of his network:

• Merchants: "How does a merchant expose their catalog to an AI without losing the direct connection with their customer? How do I know what and who I'm competing against? How do I know which customers are coming? If the AI is making a purchase, do I even get to know who that customer is...And we need to solve that problem."
• Customers: "How does the agent know whether you want to use a certain credit card, a debit card, BNPL, is it optimized for the rewards that you're getting? We'll get there, and I think PayPal is building a smart router that will enable that. But that's a problem that needs to get solved. Then there's all the things that, as you just described, are in the back of consumers' minds, like, how would I do a return? How will I do shipping tracking? What happens if there's fraud?"

Check out their announcements across agentic commerce including the landmark Perplexity Partnership, PayPal's MCP, Agent Toolkit, and more.

On PayPal's Big 5 Priorities

In order to succeed, an organization should only have a few goals they keep as a north star. Alex established the following 5 for PayPal:

1. Branded Checkout
2. Accelerating in omnichannel
3. A renewed loyalty and rewards program
4. Frontier tech (Crypto, Stablecoins, Agentic Commerce, etc.)
5. Building one PayPal platform

On Shipping Speed in The New PayPal Era

It's no secret PayPal's shipping speed, release cycles, and aggression have increased since Alex joined.

I asked about the internal pacing, especially with new technology, and he implied they have amped it up to new levels for good:

“ With the velocity in which we're talking internally, I wish I could tell our teams Hey, it's just a moment in time and then it's going to slow down. It's probably not. It's just not. But  for someone that loves product and loves innovating and loves delivering for customers, there's nothing more exciting.

 It's like, we were running an eight minute mile and now we're gonna run a six minute mile, and then we're gonna run a four minute mile, and pretty soon you're running a four minute mile for a marathon."

On the future of org design in the age of AI

"I'm thinking a lot about the traditional org design - I think it is going to have to get disrupted.

You now have agents that are enabling employees to be so much more effective and efficient. I think we're going to find flatter org structure and more employees that have larger breadth and scope in their jobs because they now have access to expertise & tools that they probably didn't before...That's really empowering for employees to be able to say, hey, you get to go from a large team to now a smaller team of employees with a large team of specialized agents around you. You now have ability to solve an end-to-end problem as an employee."

On the future of AI Adoption

Alex has learned a lot about AI and the future of commerce from an unexpected source - his 3 sons. Their AI nativity is hard for the rest of us to grasp...

“ If you don't believe that people are going to do agentic commerce by just having a conversation [with AI] and then having an agent do something on their behalf...then go watch an 18-year-old have a conversation with their AI agent. You've lost the plot!"

We cover so much more in this episode including stablecoin opportunities, AI adoption at PayPal, how he hires executives, and more.

It's packed with candid, honest insight on the opportunities ahead for PayPal and how Alex is approaching them all as a leader.

We could've talked for hours, but perhaps we'll save that for a future episode.

Enjoy the show.

Episode Highlights

01:58 Alex's rallying cry 'Customer Back' and how he's reorganized the company to think customer-first

06:28 Tactical advice for implementing transformative change at a major global enterprise

09:15 His and PayPal's Top 5 strategic priorities for the coming years

11:42 How agentic commerce will disrupt global commerce (especially merchant data) and how PayPal is positioned to help serve consumers and merchants

17:25 A deeper look at initiatives like Quantum Leap, PayPayl's Remote MCP, and Agent Toolkit

20:47 PayPal's build / buy / partner approach in agentic commerce to date

22:41 The most successful AI initiatives at PayPal, including payment method recommendation, multi-modal customer service, next-gen fraud detection, and 'EVA'

27:55 Why orgs need to get flatter and empower smaller + leaner teams to run farther with AI

29:40 Where PayPal is focusing on crypto/stablecoins on the consumer and merchant side

32:44 His aggressive approach to PayPal's innovator's dilemma and why 'innovator's dilemma is a mindset'

35:30 Regulatory changes and what it has unlocked for PayPal

37:28 Why Intuit has become a breeding ground for so many top executives

39:30 Making the leap to join PayPal from Intuit

40:39 A fun rapid-fire round including his most important criteria for executive interviews, hanging with Will Ferrell, his workouts, his dream guest on the pod, and more

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Company + Speaker Bios

PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy, creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure. They are the largest, two-sided, open commerce platform in the world with 430M+ consumer and merchant accounts. In 2024, PayPal processed more than 26 billion transactions and nearly $1.7 trillion in total payment volume - more than a quarter of the world’s annual ecommerce volume. Learn more at PayPal.com.

Alex Chriss has spent more than two decades harnessing the power of technology to help individuals and small businesses solve their greatest financial challenges. Having successfully founded and sold two start-ups and led a fast-growing division of financial software company Intuit, he is committed to helping customers compete and thrive in a rapidly changing world. Alex brings deep expertise in leading high-growth businesses, global product strategy, and customer-driven innovation to his role as PayPal’s President and CEO.

Prior to joining PayPal, Alex held various roles of increasing responsibility at Intuit. He most recently served on Intuit’s executive leadership team as the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intuit’s Small Business and Self-Employed Group where he led a global organization responsible for delivering QuickBooks and Mailchimp to millions of customers. Throughout his 20-year tenure with the company, Alex also served as Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer of Intuit’s Small Business organization, managing the full suite of QuickBooks products, including payroll and payments platform segments.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Tufts University.

Ryan Zauk is the Host of the This Month in Fintech Podcast and Bay Area lead for the broader This Week in Fintech platform. In his day job, Ryan is a private markets investor at OMERS Ventures, the investing arm of one of the world’s largest pension plans with $130Bn+ in net assets. Prior to OMERS, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s Tech Investment Banking team focused on M&A and capital markets. He is based in the Bay Area. You can find him on Linkedin or Twitter.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Ryan Zauk: The views expressed in this podcast are the speakers own and are not the views of This Week in FinTech or any other person or entity. The content provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal, business tax, or investment advice or recommendation, solicitation endorsement, or offering by me or anyone else for the sale subscription or purchase of securities, or for investment advisory services of any kind.

Hello to our global audience and welcome to today's episode of the This Month in FinTech podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Zauk, and today I sit down with an executive at the epicenter of some of the biggest trends in global technology, PayPal, CEO, Alex Gris. Alex took over as PayPal, CEO, and. September, 2023 after nearly 20 year run at into it.

Since joining PayPal less than two years ago, his tenure has turned a lot of heads in the industry. PayPal seems reinvigorated and on the offensive working to take advantage of the several [00:01:00] platform shifts we're seeing in global technology and commerce. We've seen new hires, a company reorganization, startup-like release cycles, will Ferrell, branding campaigns, and so much more.

Alex comes on the show at the perfect time in his tenure as he approaches the two year mark and his bold vision for PayPal is turning into reality. In this episode, we discuss his internal rally and cry customer back, the future of agent tech Commerce, PayPal's adoption of ai, both internally and externally.

His take on stable coin's, real potential, and how he views PayPal's innovator's dilemma as opportunity. And a fund rapid fire round, covering everything from his most important question for executive interviews to Will Ferrell jokes. We could have talked for hours. Alex was phenomenal, but perhaps we'll save that for a future episode.

Enjoy the show. Alex, welcome to today's episode of the This Month in FinTech podcast. It's great to have you on the show today at this crucible moment in FinTech.

[00:01:55] Alex Chriss: Ryan, thanks for having me. , It's really good to be here.

[00:01:58] Ryan Zauk: So I wanna start with [00:02:00] this new chapter in PayPal's history that you're stewarding. There's a lot to cover here, which we'll get to. But in speaking to a lot of employees about you, I heard one phrase that came up more than any other, and I think it'll help set this scene for this episode.

That phrase was customer back. What is customer back that you're bringing to PayPal?

[00:02:18] Alex Chriss: Yeah. Well, it's been. 20 months or so since I joined the company. It is just such an incredible company and such a privilege to be part of PayPal. , But one of the things that, that is really important to me that, uh, I've learned over my career and , that, , I tried to bring to, to PayPal and I think we're seeing some momentum, is really that, obsession around the customer and, , we talk about it as customer back internally, you know, look, every company serves lots of stakeholders, right?

You've got investors and shareholders that are talking to you all the time. You've got partners that are talking to you all the time. You've got employees that you know you're serving. All of them are very vocal. Customers are usually the ones that actually drive the business results, and yet they're the ones that, that sometimes are, are the quiet ones.

, They'll quit if they, [00:03:00] if you're not delivering for them, then they just leave. , And they're not, they're not the ones, , calling you after, , an earnings and saying, , Hey, this is what I needed from the stock. When we talk about customer back, it's ensuring that. But the customers are actually at the root of everything that we do.

They're the ones that have a seat at the table when we're making decisions. It's so easy to think about what the shareholder outcome is going to be. It's actually really hard, and it, requires practice and discipline to think about what a decision, a product decision, uh, a financial decision, a pricing decision is going to do to the customer.

So it's just a reminder that in every conversation, in every meeting that we're having, in every discussion, that we're putting the customer at the center of the problem, we're putting the customer at the center of the conversation and, we're falling in love with their problem. And, you know, I had a, I had a leader event many years ago, said, , fall in love with, the customer's problem and not your solution.

So often as leaders, it's easy to fall in love with a solution because it's so true. It puts [00:04:00] to a, a, a spreadsheet that delivers a great outcome and then you get it to market and you realize, well, wait, how come nobody adopted this? And you realize, well, you didn't actually understand what the customer problem was.

So it's just a reminder. Um, there there's no, secret sauce on how to make it work. You just gotta keep reminding everybody in the organization top to bottom that, , we're here to serve customers. When we serve customers really well. Then all the other stakeholders actually get, uh,

[00:04:28] Ryan Zauk: get taken down.

Very, very good advice. And so going a level deeper there, so you joined PayPal over the last two or so years, how did you reconfigure the organization? Is it now, a consumer SMB enterprise Division? How did you define customer because you serve so many,

[00:04:44] Alex Chriss: as you just described, organizing around the customers.

Organizing customer back was one of the first moves that we made. So, , when I came in, , we reorganized so that we actually were serving. Very clearly our consumer base. Our small business base and our, enterprise base, uh, our, [00:05:00] our large merchants, and each of them has very different needs. And so, , having a, a general manager and a product leader who's thinking about what are the specific needs that the consumer has, what are the specific needs that large enterprises have, and how am I building products and services?

To be able to deliver them. So that was one of the first moves that we made. You know, to be transparent, we made a lot of leadership changes. And again, everyone on my, direct staff is, new, either new to the company or certainly new to the, C-suite and new to the role. And, and to be transparent when I was looking for is real product leaders, you know, operators, uh, and, and innovators that we're looking to.

To fight and compete. Right? I mean, FinTech is a incredibly competitive space. Definitely. Uh, PayPal, we, we are, we're sort of, uh, the old guard in FinTech, right? It's a 25-year-old company, but I, I came in, you know, I'm less than two years in. I wanna take the, the assets that we have, the advantages that we have and reinvent for the future.

So we changed the mission, , to be all [00:06:00] about. , Revolutionizing commerce globally and really thinking about, Hey, we're not gonna rest on what's made us successful for the last 25 years. We're, we're thinking about what the future holds. Uh, so invented the mission, rebuilt the leadership team, and then organized the company customer back and, and really put a focus on innovation and velocity.

And I think if you've seen what we've put out, into the market in the last, , , year and a half, , I'm really proud of the focused energy. The innovation and the velocity at which

[00:06:27] Ryan Zauk: we're we're starting to lead. Yeah, and the entire industry has taken note. I think every FinTech group chat that I'm in over the last year or two has been, my God, PayPal is shipping, shipping, shipping, agent, e-commerce, quantum leap, advertising, new products.

It just continues to grow. And we'll get to those in just a second. There's one thing I want to touch on because we have a lot of founders and growth stage executives that listen to this show. You came into this. Multi, multi-billion dollar organization from another massive org. As , new CEO, what were some tactical lessons or [00:07:00] tips that you implemented to.

Bring in this much dramatic change without rocking the boat too much and losing PayPal's core.

[00:07:07] Alex Chriss: You have to be humble enough to realize that, that what you're doing is, standing on the shoulders of giants and there's just a, a whole.

Train of unbelievable executives that have built the company to where it is. That said, you know, I told the board and the conversation I had when they hired me was, if you're looking for a caretaker to just continue the business, please don't choose me. I am not, that is not the role that I want and that's not what I'm good at.

, If you want someone that's gonna transform and compete and figure out what the future looks like, that's what gets me jumping outta bed every morning. So in order to do that first, I went on a very comprehensive listening tour, which included. Deep conversations with customers on a global basis.

Conversations with investors, conversations with partners, really, , talking , to all the stakeholders. And then obviously talking to employees and understanding, what makes PayPal special, what is the secret sauce that is working, and then what's [00:08:00] getting in your way? What is really slowing you down?

What's making, your job as an employee harder? When we talked to shareholders, it was, , what, what are you excited about and, what's getting in the way? And just having that deep listening tour, you really start to see patterns. And for any leader, , we all know that being curious and asking great questions gives us.

The ability to then see patterns across, themes, across stakeholders. And then at some point you gotta put your stamp on it and you gotta have some conviction and write it down and say, this is the direction we're gonna go. And I think, , one of the things that's most important, especially early in,

in any new leader's tenure is, having real clarity and conviction of the direction of the organization. So we narrowed down the priorities from, , what felt like a few dozen to five, and we said, this is what we're gonna focus on. You know, the time horizons shrank for everyone and that, that made things uncomfortable.

But we were gonna say, look, we're gonna put the weight of the organization behind these five things and [00:09:00] uh, and we're gonna go after it and, mm-hmm. You know, it's, it's, allowed us to be very focused. It's allowed us to put our energy, it's allowed us to be very transparent with the external market so they can hold us accountable for what we said we were going to do.

And, , and we're starting to really, , see the results there.

[00:09:15] Ryan Zauk: And quickly, what are those five?

[00:09:16] Alex Chriss: Yeah, well, ensuring that our branded checkout, was front and center. You know, this is something that's been, , clear to the organization that, that we needed to, focus on.

So ensuring that, , praying to checkout is where we wanted to be. And, we could talk about lots of different, gaps in the product there, but, I feel really good about the momentum there. Um, moving into omnichannel. Which is a big change from, where the organization has been in the past, in serving customers where they are, again, talking customer back.

We've been known for, serving e-commerce, but really being able to deliver for customers everywhere that they wanna buy. Really improving the value proposition. So from a rewards perspective, from a loyalty perspective, just making it, more obvious as to why you would want to use. [00:10:00] PayPal or use Venmo exactly where you want it to be.

So a real loyalty and rewards program. And then thinking about the future, like what is the future rails? Uh, how does crypto work? How should we be leaning into stable coins? What is the future of, of what we want from a, from an e-commerce perspective, which can include, um, ag agentic as well. Then, and then lastly, we were being slowed down.

We've done a lot of incredible, acquisitions. We've started a lot of projects, but you've gotta have a common platform and in a world where, you know, the advantage that we have in FinTech is the scale of our business, right? We've got a quarter of e-commerce running through PayPal. Uh, when that's fragmented and you don't have.

One common customer data set or one common risk platform, , or one common ability to authenticate someone in one area of the product and step them up on, on a risk, \, provision somewhere and have that flow through all of your different products. Then you're just shooting yourself in the foot. And so we really focused on how do we create.

One PayPal platform. And [00:11:00] those are the original, uh, we've evolved them over time. As , things like AG agentic weren't even on the radar 18 months ago to be transparent, but here we are now, just, , continuing to keep that laser focus.

[00:11:10] Ryan Zauk: That's awesome. I was just talking with someone earlier today.

I was like, AG agentic was not a word. 18 months ago, voice AI was not a concept 18 months ago. And so it's quite a nimble time. I mean, not

[00:11:20] Alex Chriss: even 18 months ago, February, we did six months on investor day, and I had on a slide agent to commerce. , . Zero questions, not a single follow up question. Uh, April, uh, we did, uh, conference, , with investors. 45 of a six. Every 60 minute conversation was about agent commerce. It's just, it's, it's absolutely turned on a dime.

[00:11:42] Ryan Zauk: Yeah. Well, I'm sorry. I'm about to add to that count 'cause I do want to jump into a Gentech commerce. To your point, probably no bigger buzzword across FinTech e-comm consumer payments marketplace Right now in the valley, we've seen launches from you. We've seen launches from the card networks, other psps, e-comm [00:12:00] platforms and more.

How is PayPal positioning itself to lead, as one of the few platforms that has both consumer and then checkout? Yeah.

[00:12:08] Alex Chriss: Well, look, I, you're hearing a lot from us because, , I think we are incredibly excited about, uh this, this next move. If you think about what e-commerce did, just enabling consumers and merchants to now actually discover, and they purchased this online in a frictionless area.

I mean, that's really where, PayPal started to accelerate and really was more, this feels like the, that kind of of. If not even bigger evolution. And so this is our opportunity to really lean in and, , paint the future. Um, what, what we're excited about is consumers and merchants have unique needs.

Uh, we have them at scale and it's one of the things that makes PayPal is one of the things that drew me to the company, was a two-sided network at massive scale. So, , serving, you know, close to half a billion consumers around the world,, serving 30, 40 million. [00:13:00] Merchants around the world and being able to now enable them to find each other, find in a personalized way, find the right product at the right time, at the right price, and enabling AI to do all of that for you, I think is absolutely.

An exceptional opportunity. And when I look at how consumers are starting to adopt ai, they really are just having these conversational converse por, , discussions where, you know, it could be about, , finding the next, uh, travel or finding the next product and just be able to describe exactly what they want and then not have to go spend time searching through the web to find exactly what they need.

But being able to just have the AI VOD that work now. That's the good news, right? That's what sounds amazing. That's what gets us excited. That's the sort of like, close your eyes, you can imagine it. Wonderful. Now let's talk about all the problems with that and, when I say problems, I mean opportunity because what PayPal's really good at is making it frictionless [00:14:00] and, reducing those, challenges.

So the problems with that is, okay, so what, how does a merchant. Expose their catalog to an AI without losing the direct connection with their customer. Right. I mean that Absolutely. That doesn't work today. Yeah. And so, , there is a very clear model that's been established over the last 15 years.

If you're a merchant, you put some inventory in, you create a website, you go buy some keywords, you kind of know if I spend a little bit more on keywords, I get the right customers. Hopefully they're targeted customers, and then I can optimize my conversion. And there's a, a little bit of an ROI calculation that's very.

Tried and true in ai, how does that work? , So I expose my catalog. How do I know what, who I'm competing against? How do I know what customers are coming? If the AI is making a purchase, do I even get to know who that customer is? Do I get to have a follow up and a relationship with them? Or I just, uh, you know, selling a, a widget to somebody that I [00:15:00] don't know, right?

. And we need to solve that problem. And again, if you really think about what we've established over 25 years, we have the world's largest commerce, LLM, you know, we have over 80% of e-commerce in a catalog that we can start to really A, enable the AI genes to be able to get access to, but b.

, What we put out with our being the first with a remote, uh, MCP server is really enabling the merchants to still have agency over the customers and a, relationship with their customers. So that's on the merchant side and the agent side. Now let's talk about the consumer side. It sounds magical to just speak into your phone, uh, and have, have your agent go off and make a purchase for you.

But how, like. Do you trust the agent to have access? I just had this problem on,

[00:15:48] Ryan Zauk: on Sunday. I was trying to buy tuxedo shoes for a wedding and I didn't trust the agent. I had to go manually verify myself. Wanna make sure we got the right size right. Shipping address, right form everything.

[00:15:58] Alex Chriss: Everything you just talked about [00:16:00] we've grown accustomed to, but, oh my gosh, like usually you've got multiple instruments.

How does the agent know whether you want to, you know, use a certain credit card, a reward credit card, a debit card, buy now, pay later, uh, is it optimized for the rewards that you're getting? Right. That there's, we'll get there and I think PayPal, , is building a smart role that, that will enable that.

But that's a problem that needs to get solved. Then there's all the things that, as you just described, are in the back of consumer's minds, like, how would I do a return? How will I do shipping tracking? How will I, do you know, what happens if there's fraud? What happens if I bought this thing and it turns out that the tuxedo you just bought, was made out of velvet.

You didn't want veted, tuxedo, and all of a sudden you wanna return it? How is that all gonna work? And , to be honest, the agents that we've talked to, and we are working with all them, you saw, we, we did an announcing with perplexity, which we're really excited about. Um, and we're working with all the eight, all the agents, but they're focused on a [00:17:00] GI.

They're focused on how do we build, you know, the future. That's what they should be focused on. They're coming to, to players like us and, specifically PayPal because we've got both sides of the ecosystem. We know how to connect the dots. We can enable them. So I, I'm just, I'm really excited because I do think this is going to create new opportunities for merchants and for consumers, but there's a lot of the, the details to actually work out, to make it as magical as, as we all hope it'll be.

[00:17:25] Ryan Zauk: Right. And then can we go a level deeper into, you know, some. Product announcements that have happened, PayPal, MCP, the Agent Toolkit, even Quantum Leap. What are some of these announcements now going to enable in the future for merchants and shoppers?

[00:17:40] Alex Chriss: Yeah, so let me hit on a couple of those different things.

So Quantum Leap is one that you talked about this, is one that we came out with a little over a year ago. , That that's not an external, um name. We call that internal because really. What it is, is a reinvention of our, , branded checkout. And so it's , streamlining, , what we put out , [00:18:00] over a decade ago, which is, that that iconic PayPal button that everyone knows and loves, but now how do we use.

More modern, , tools like biometrics and, an API that, that it's able to identify if you're a PayPal user and be able to then say, Hey, you, by the way, you know, this merchant wants to be able to give you a reward because they know that you're a new customer to them. So all of the data, all that personalization.

Uh, that's now built into our, APIs and services is really what we, think about when we think about, , that quantum leap experience that all gets now exposed with these remote MP MCP servers and our agent toolkit. So how do we now take really the, APIs and the secret sauce that usually PayPal is having a one-to-one relationship with the merchant and enable an agent to be able to grab that.

Have that conversation with between the merchant and then ultimately the consumer. And so, the best part about an MCP server is it allows agents to [00:19:00] get access to this work without having to go build all those integrations, right? If any agent decided, okay, well I want all the commerce out there, I'm gonna go, , connect all to all merchants.

When you think about the head, the torso, and the tail of millions of merchants. It would take them, , over a decade. I mean, , that's what we've been doing. And so instead of having to go one by one through merchants, they get access to PayPal's network of merchants instantly, and then they're able to allow the agents as they're thinking through and processing what the consumer request is to actually call in real time.

You know, our, APIs and the data that we have, and now, you know, we'll continue to build on it. We'll continue to make it more robust, but it's enabling that conversation in real time between consumers and merchants, all facilitated by the agents, and it's, it's really exciting. Again we just talked about it in February.

We launched it, I think. End of April, beginning of May. We've got partners now that are, are coding against it and, and launching to [00:20:00] customers. And I think as we get through the summer and fall, , at least from an agent capability perspective, it's gonna be there from a consumer adoption perspective.

Right. Your guess is as good as mine. I think people are gonna dabble with it. I think they're gonna have the same reaction you did, which is. How much trust do I have?

[00:20:19] Ryan Zauk: Right.

[00:20:19] Alex Chriss: Um, , our perspective is, , PayPal and Venmo are trusted brands that have built, decades of, , legacy of trust and safety and security.

And so when we put something out, , with our, guarantees on, the, the connection with a merchant, um it matters. And again, , all these merchants that are available through our, ecosystem are ones that we've onboarded, are the ones that we validated. And so, from a fraud perspective, , we stand behind, the services that we put out.

[00:20:47] Ryan Zauk: Yeah, I do have to say anytime I'm on. Fringe Frontier websites and I see the PayPal checkout button. I'll use it with a hundred percent certainty, regular shopping. Uh, and I do have one last question here . I mean, we [00:21:00] could talk the whole rest of the episode on this, but how has your team dropped that.

Build by partner decisioning so far. Right. There's so many opportunities out there, early stage companies that have been formed, partnerships that you've already decided, and then given all the new product velocity of PayPal, how did you rally your team to think about this?

[00:21:17] Alex Chriss: I, I think having a very robust inorganic roadmap is always something that, that we have running. The reality of AI right now is it's moving so fast. That there isn't proven technology that's out there that's, , three, four years advanced. That , from a tech perspective makes a lot of sense to acquire 'cause in, in agent to commerce.

'cause it's just all so new. We, we also can't wait. And, the velocity in which we're talking internally, you know, I wish I could tell our teams like, Hey, it's just a moment in time and then it's gonna slow down all that.

It, it's just not, it's probably not. It's just not. Now the good news is we're bringing in [00:22:00] our own tools and technology. We're leveraging AI internally, right? Our efficiency is going up. Uh. But, we talk about velocity and we talk about just the pace of innovation and the pace of what we need to put out.

We talk about that and my leadership team. Every time we get together. And , for someone that loves product and loves innovating and loves delivering for customers, like there's nothing more exciting. Um, but, but it's, it's real. And it's, it's probably never gonna slow down. We're just gonna get used to it at, this pace.

It's like, we were running an eight minute mile and now we're gonna run a six minute mile, and then we're gonna run a four minute mile, and pretty soon you're running a four minute mile for a marathon. And that's just how it works. So true.

[00:22:42] Ryan Zauk: I, I, we're all feeling it.

I, it doesn't matter what industry you're in right now, I think we're all trying to sprint, the marathon as, you said. , I'd love to actually double click on some of the, threads that you left on ai. This is probably the biggest buzz of all, more than agent eCommerce, more than stable coins.

I'd love to understand where specifically PayPal. [00:23:00] Is deploying AI to create value across, , your two-sided network and data footprint. Especially,

[00:23:05] Alex Chriss: I mean, we've got AI across the entire ecosystem. So right now, um, significant investment internally, as you can imagine, we have data sets that are massive.

This is not only for risk and fraud and making sure that, our customers are protected, our merchants are protected. , But it's also, customer service. , We've rolled out, customer service agents that, . Can answer customer's questions, right? Instead of, yeah. I mean, people wanna know, where's my money?

Right. How, at a refund, how do I mean just the basics that you want And is that chat voice or both? Or email. Uh, it's, it's chat. It's moving to voice. 'cause customers are getting more comfortable with voice. Right. You know, it's, and that's been a big change. You know, a year ago, voice, voice, sorry,

[00:23:45] Ryan Zauk: was even a thing.

[00:23:46] Alex Chriss: It wasn't a thing. And, and BNP, it sort of, you know, customers weren't loving it. They wanted to talk to a human, right. We still have, we still have a lot of incredible employees that answer questions, but now as AI is ramping up, we're getting more and more customers [00:24:00] that. Love chat and then are saying, well, wait a second.

I'm used to talking to an agent on my phone. Uh, I wanna talk to an agent like the, like, give me, gimme an AI agent. And so we're evolving very quickly to deliver for customers. We're deploying AI for our own employees. And this is not just engineering. Uh, this is across the entire employee base. Right. You said

[00:24:20] Ryan Zauk: Eva, right?

Is what I've heard.

[00:24:22] Alex Chriss: Yeah. E Eva is what we've named our, you know, think of it as our orchestration layer, internally, which has access to every single model you can think of. , Because , every model has its own unique characteristics and, we wanted to give all the models to our, to our employees, but we needed to have an orchestration layer in one interface.

, For employees to get access and, this orchestration layer also then has access to all of our internal data. So you actually get to have, , a protected conversation where you can really get work done. But we're seeing, , efficiency gains, obviously for engineering. , But across every function, uh, our designers, our marketers, our product leaders, [00:25:00] our support leaders, like everybody right now, sales, you know, tremendous, efficiency gains as, as we're starting to leverage ai.

And I'm really, just noticing. A bit of a shift from a mindset, you know, before it was a little bit of, you know, employees holding back saying, , yeah, I get ai. I think it's gonna be helpful. If I have a question that I'm stumped on, or maybe a task that's, you know, seems to be inefficient, maybe I'll leverage AI for it.

We're really starting to flip into that AI native mindset where we're saying, look, let's just start, like, let go to the tools first. Let's, let's leverage AI to be, , solving the problems that we need. Um, I, I wouldn't say we're, we're bright green on that yet, but we're definitely handing in that direction.

Uh, and then for customers, , and merchants. That, that's where I get really excited because, you know, we talked about the smart wallet, like the ability to, to leverage ai. You know, we talked to customers and said, hey, how do you make [00:26:00] a decision on which instrument to choose when you make a purchase?

And the feedback we got time and time again as we would have conversations with consumers is they have no idea. , And they're actually overwhelmed, right? They all have reward cards, they've got debit cards, they've got buy now, pay later options. They've got a million different options at every checkout.

And we said, well, look, if we could tell you and give you more information, make you smarter when you make that decision so that , hey, if you're making that airline ticket. You actually get these reward points with this instrument. But if you're buying, these concert tickets, you get a different level.

If you bought, if you used a different instrument. The holy grail.

[00:26:38] Ryan Zauk: Yeah.

[00:26:38] Alex Chriss: Like if we could give you that kind of intelligence in real time, you know, how much more empowered would you be? And , we put that to a test and ran a quick experiment where we actually leveraged AI to inform the consumer. We saved hundreds of millions of dollars.

Consumer spend by them being able to just route the [00:27:00] decisions by being it's credible, more profitable in their choice. So we're just scratching the surface of what that can look like. Mm-hmm. Um, and then on the merchant side, same thing, like how do they know who to go after? Right. We launch in the ad platform.

Which allows our, our, we, we have over 80 million consumers that have opted in based on the trust that they have with, PayPal to be able to share some of their profile data. Giving that to emergence to then be able to say, , Hey, tell me the cohort of customers you want, would you be willing to pay more to acquire that customer?

And if so, what's the reward that you'd be willing to give them? And leveraging AI to be able to automate that customer acquisition. It's, it's lowering their ROI, it's lowering their cac. It's, it's raising their ROI, lowering their CAC and giving them real access to, um. You know, to to, to their limited marketing spend to drive the results that they want.

So again, we're super excited about, about how to leverage AI across the whole ecosystem.

[00:27:55] Ryan Zauk: Got it. And with AI adoption comes so much change that [00:28:00] organizations, leadership teams and, you know, operators ICS might not be ready for. What are some of the hurdles that you faced or are facing in enterprise adoption for ai?

[00:28:11] Alex Chriss: I'm thinking a lot about the traditional org design, I think is gonna have to get disrupted. Uh. We have a very clear just like most organizations, kind of a pyramid structure.

Um, you've got managers, you've got, , people on teams. Those teams continue. I think that org design shifts when you now have agents that are enabling employees to be so much more effective and efficient. And I think we're gonna find flatter org structure. We're gonna find more employees that have larger breadth and scope in their jobs because they actually now have access to expertise and tools that.

They probably didn't even have before and they had to, work in a, certain type of team in order to get things done. But now they actually have a [00:29:00] team of agents available for them and so they could own more. And I think that's actually gonna be really empowering for employees to be able to say, hey, you get to work maybe from a large team to now a smaller team of employees, but with a large team of specialized agents around you.

But now you have full ability to solve an end-to-end problem as an employee. I think that's gonna be really, really exciting. So I think that's gonna be a big unlock and it's gonna change the way people adopt the tools. But I don't think we could just take, , traditional org models, add tools, and expect that we're gonna get the right outcome.

I think we're gonna have to really rethink. The design of organizations

[00:29:40] Ryan Zauk: Makes sense. And now let's, let's jump to the third big theme of the moment, which is crypto and stable coins. PayPal is in my opinion, one of the first large tech companies to lean in to crypto, you know, kind of pre COVID hype.

We'll start with on the consumer side. Where are PayPal and Venmo trying to integrate [00:30:00] crypto into their day-to-day products?

[00:30:01] Alex Chriss: So first, you're right. , We launched our own stable Coane, P-Y-U-S-D. I think we were one of the first to really, uh, get out there in a , highly regulated environment.

We worked through, you know, our, our state pathway with, uh, the, the New York FDS and just wanted to make this thing, representative of what a PayPal product would look like, where, everything is, is backed one-to-one. And, and, and we felt really, really good about it. Here's my belief on the reality of, of stable coins.

, This is not a cure-all for all of financial services, but it is a really, really important product for some really big problems that exist today. So. When I think about domestic payments, domestic peer to peer, it kind of works pretty well, right? Right. I mean, yes, we could use stablecoin, but there's an education element, there's a replacement element.

You know, five years from now, 10 years from now, will we get there? Maybe. Uh, but that's not the [00:31:00] first thing that we're gonna go solve. Uh, US consumer buying from a US merchant. We'll make it available, but I don't, I don't see there's gonna be a ton of adoption more in the short term. Now, when you start to talk about cross-border transactions, when you start to talk about, , merchants that are in, high inflationary, , geographies.

And you, and we started to go to them and say, Hey, you, if you could get paid, uh, we could do a currency conversion for you, or would you want to get paid in P-Y-U-S-D? And you'll have all the, liquidity you need to be able to make, , a conversion to a local Fiat if you want. But would you wanna hold.

P-Y-U-S-D. And then would you want to be able to make other B2B payments, , if you need to pay vendors, , cross border or anything else with P-Y-U-S-D as well, that starts to unlock huge savings for these merchants. And from a consumer standpoint, huge potential savings in [00:32:00] cross-border, , peer-to-peer transactions and purchases as well.

So I, we're really excited about it 'cause there's just a lot of friction speed. Trust, safety and fees in cross-border transactions right now. That I think we're gonna be in a really, advantageous part with both sides of the ecosystem. Yeah. To be able to, really make an impact over the coming months.

[00:32:24] Ryan Zauk: Do you feel yourself facing a bit of that innovator's dilemma? , Because there is big fee pools, traditional rails at PayPal has strengthen, and now you're going to be almost leapfrogging existing global financial infrastructure .

[00:32:36] Alex Chriss: I invoke Innovator's dilemma probably like twice a week inside of the organization. , First it's a mindset. Second of all, it's the thing that gets us the most excited because yes, will we disrupt? , Potential revenue pools that we have today. Absolutely. But , the size of the prize is much larger than where we're playing today.

And so when I think about, what pie can we play after, I'd [00:33:00] rather go after, a good slice of a much, much larger pie. Then hold on to, the slice of a small pie that we have today. And so. It's something we have to talk about. It's something that we have to reconcile.

I'll give you an example. We, we rolled out, , the ability for, our consumers and merchants to be able to convert some of their balance in Venmo and PayPal into P-Y-U-S-D if they want and earn reward off of that balance. We make money on their balance right now. Right. So that's giving up.

Revenue that we have from that, that we're holding now and giving it back to consumers that they want to convert. Mm-hmm. , That was, you know, it was a conversation we had. It was a clear eye decision that we made, and for us it started to seed. A better ecosystem for the future because we believe, hey, this will actually drive, especially for, merchants more balance actually being held inside of the ecosystem.

You add that to some of the product launches we've got now with, bill pay and more ability [00:34:00] for, B2B transactions to happen, and all of a sudden we start to create this ecosystem of stable coin transactions at high, high volume and high velocity. That, that's a bigger pie for us. As a company, it's the blessing and the curse of being 25 years old and, and 30 plus billion dollars in revenue is , you're doing something right.

And so there's always that challenge of, of what are you gonna disrupt? Yep. Yeah. , I'm looking for, how are we gonna 10 x the position that we're in right now, and in order to do that, let's play bigger games and , let's be willing to disrupt ourselves.

[00:34:32] Ryan Zauk: Absolutely. And it is funny, , we keep saying 25 years as if it's such an ancient company.

It's really not that long ago.

[00:34:37] Alex Chriss: It's really not. But, but you know, I, I, it's, things change quickly. I, I go to business councils. I sit on these obvious things. I look at all the companies around me and I, you know, we are by far the youngest,

[00:34:48] Ryan Zauk: right?

[00:34:48] Alex Chriss: Company in that cohort, and then you look at the FinTech world and we're like the granddaddy of, of FinTech.

And so it's this funny balance that we go back and forth on. I think , [00:35:00] the thing that gets me , most excited is this first wave of evolution of FinTech to get to where we are, I think was the infancy. And so it's exciting to be a 30 plus billion dollar company, , in revenue, in, in the infancy of FinTech.

What's gonna happen over the next 10 to 15 years is gonna be his move to adulthood, which is going to just transform as everything moves into, into online, right? Uh, or age agentic. We wanna be the leaders to be able to transform there.

[00:35:30] Ryan Zauk: Yeah, I agree. I think we're at a unique moment in history where quote unquote, incumbents may be positioned to win through these tech sea changes.

They have much faster tech adoption cycles and more tech forward leadership than decades past. And of course, the distribution advantages and. In today's era, technology moats are falling by the day, but distribution moats matter more than ever, and so it's a great opportunity for folks like PayPal.

Now, one more question on stables here. We've had a pretty [00:36:00] dynamic regulatory landscape over the last few years. What has this new regulatory regime unlocked for PayPal's crypto efforts? Now?

[00:36:08] Alex Chriss: Look, we, we were moving forward. You know, we're, we're not, we're not a tiny startup. We're not someone that's gonna go run an offshore account just to be able to get this done.

So we were moving through the regulatory, , hurdles and we were very successful. As you mentioned before, we launched a stable coin that was regulated and well perceived. The challenge is, would you have regulatory headwinds? Just the overall industry adoption is limited and so.

With the new STAs, with, , the momentum that we're seeing right now, I think we're just gonna see an acceleration. And I like the position that we're in when, mm-hmm. Consumer merchant bang, you know, overall even government adoption is going to, to go up because, then we can really start to accelerate.

So we were, involved in, working with government , on the, construction of the [00:37:00] genius, , act so we're, really excited about this momentum. And, , let's be honest, , it's, it's mostly traders that are, that are taking advantage right now.

What I'm getting excited about is when, when do consumers and merchants really start to get into this game? That's gonna take some time and it's gonna have to be focused on where's the biggest friction. And again, go back to that. Customer back. The problem that we're gonna fall in love with first is high fee, high friction in cross border transactions.

That's a big thing that we can solve. .

[00:37:28] Ryan Zauk: And now I want to switch gears as we head to the last section of the episode. I want to turn more to you as an individual and leader. Starting with, , the place where you really grew up as an executive at Intuit. Intuit has built from the outside at least a pretty incredible leadership factory.

Many execs had long tenures in Intuit and then land at phenomenal roles at other companies like you did yourself. What made it a long term home for you and such an effective training ground as a leader?

[00:37:56] Alex Chriss: Yeah. , Incredible company, , and had . Two big elements [00:38:00] that came together that just worked really well to train me and, , and many other, , leaders.

One was, you know, this real product, customer obsession. , And I give a lot of credit to Scott Cook, who's the founder, who, , still is involved on a day-to-day basis and just. Obsesses about customers and obsesses about, , how to build great, frictionless products for customers. Uh, the other thing that, that the company really invested in was leadership development.

And, you know, I, I was an entrepreneur before I joined. I joined at a, , relatively young age and did, wasn't even, I, I joined to help Rhon a start up there and figured I'd be there two or three years and then go start something else and ended up staying there for almost 20 years. The reason was every time I thought about leaving, I realized how much I was learning and how much the company was investing in me to both give me new, bigger, challenging opportunities, but also just learning how to be a leader, learning how to operate, learning how to just do [00:39:00] things that I could have learned maybe on my own.

But I knew that, , eventually, , the investment they were making in me would just make me a, a better leader. And so, . That, that deep customer obsession and that that learning ecosystem, uh, were two things that I think makes the company special. And then, we've seen a lot of great executives come out of Intuit and, be leaders across the industry right now.

And I think, it is a factory that, I hope to replicate here at PayPal as well, and, and build the next, great leaders.

[00:39:30] Ryan Zauk: . And then you did eventually leave and take this great role as CEO of PayPal. Was there a specific moment or conversation that convinced you to take this leap?

[00:39:39] Alex Chriss: You know, I was not planning on leaving. I think the thing that got me most excited about PayPal was, you know, I love network effects and I love two-sided ecosystems. And, and, and I have a passion for small businesses, which is what I've focused on for a while. The scale that PayPal operates on. On a global basis [00:40:00] is really hard to ignore.

You know, after, a while being at a company, uh you get a little bit comfortable and, , I knew how to operate in the old role. , I wanted to see if, , hey, of all this stuff that I just learned. All these things that, that I'm passionate about. Could I help transform a company that I think has the potential to be one of the greatest technology, uh, organizations for the next two decades?

And that's what brought me out. I mean, what a privilege it is to be a PayPal , and be able to, not only an iconic company from the past, but one that I think is gonna transform the future.

[00:40:38] Ryan Zauk: And so, Alex, you've made it to the final part of the interview, which is the rapid fire question around here. Have you, about 10 or so questions, replies, no longer than 10, 30 seconds. Are you ready? Yeah, let's do it. All right. So a couple of dovetailing off that last answer. High stakes, high volume job, probably limited free time.

How do you stay grounded?

[00:40:57] Alex Chriss: Spend a lot of time with family when I can, , when I'm not [00:41:00] traveling, , try to keep my workouts going. Uh, what do you do? Uh, I, I've got a gin in the garage, so I have no excuses. I do some version of a crossfitted type of situation that I've been doing for the last, you know, 10, 15 years and just, uh, and then if I get any chance to cook, cook a meal for friends or family.

I'll do that, but that's, that's about it. Got it. Go-to dish. Uh, I'll cook anything, but if, if it's warm out and I can, I can grill. Grill, get some steaks on the barbecue, I'll do that. Yeah.

[00:41:30] Ryan Zauk: Ultimate dad mode. I love it. Yes. And then going back to the family ties, do you ever lean on family for product inspiration?

Testing,

[00:41:39] Alex Chriss: you know, I've got three boys, uh, um, of, uh, you know, teenage age harsh critics. Yeah. It's, well, they're, they're the best because, you know, anytime I think, you know, oh yeah, I'm really advanced in AI or things like that, I just watch what they're doing and I'm ha and watching them have like deep [00:42:00] emotional conversations.

With an agent, just having conversations and so all the things that we just, it just makes you feel old and you realize the products that we're gonna build for the future. If you don't believe that people are going to be doing agentic commerce by just having a conversation and having an work, having an agent do something on their behalf.

Go watch,, an 18-year-old Right. Have a conversation with their agent. You've lost the plot, like, it's gonna happen. Crazy.

[00:42:27] Ryan Zauk: Next question. Maybe throwing back to your teenage years, what was the first job that you ever had?

[00:42:31] Alex Chriss: Uh, I, I grew up playing tennis and, , my first paid job was stringing tennis rackets in a,

a tiny little sweat box of a, of a,

[00:42:40] Ryan Zauk: it's gritty. Uh, all right, next one. You founded a business as you mentioned. What is the biggest lesson you learned as a founder that still sticks with you? You

[00:42:48] Alex Chriss: know what's funny is, , I founded a business right in college. I went to Kinko's and put a CEO on, the business card.

Um, this felt great. So anybody, anybody can be CEO. [00:43:00] All you have to do is make a business card and put your title on it. , It is not, it is not the title that makes the CEO it is what your people, , look at you as. And so you wanna be a real leader. , You gotta learn to lead people.

And, , at 18, 19 years old, I didn't have any idea what I was doing. , Hopefully I've learned how to do it a little bit better at this point. But, it is not the title that makes the CEO.

[00:43:21] Ryan Zauk: Next one. , It's been such an earworm, this Will Ferrell commercial that you all put out.

I want to pay with you everywhere. It's like killing me. What is the genesis of that story and did you get to meet Will?

[00:43:31] Alex Chriss: Yeah, I mean, look, our consumer team, our marketing team, , you know, Diego, Scotty, Jesse, like these guys are just unbelievable and. , When I came in, one of the big things I wanted to do was, , reinvent and reinvigorate the PayPal brand and, , we wanted to go out and find someone iconic that spoke to, , a global audience at all generation and will and all generations and, and Will Ferrell's about is, I mean, everybody walks, whips, universal.[00:44:00]

So they did an incredible job. I did get to spend time with him. We actually took, it, brought into one of our all hands at PayPal Park in San Jose. Uh, he, he came up and, and did a, uh, a whole bit where, you know, he, he told the audience of, employees that I invited him there because I was making him the new CEO, , which was fantastic.

Uh, that's, and again, just he's exactly how you would expect the most, the nicest, most down to earth obviously, invest. Heavily in his craft. Right. And, uh, just an exceptional guy.

[00:44:32] Ryan Zauk: Love that. All right.. You interviewed a lot of folks, I'm sure, to bring them on to PayPal.

As you alluded to the beginning of the episode. What is your go-to or must ask interview question?

[00:44:41] Alex Chriss: You know, I, I usually wanna know what gives people energy, like I really want to know. You know, these are hard jobs, especially at the, at the senior levels. Like these are hard jobs. These are grinds. And when you can really tap into the [00:45:00] motivations for people, it's important.

And it's important because it, it aligns culturally. And so, you know, even, even to use the simplicity of, , trying to root out, you know, are they a mercenary or a missionary, and. The, the answer, it doesn't matter from a like who they are, like I have no judgment of, of what their answer is. But if what makes them tick is is not aligned with what we're trying to drive from a mission perspective.

Then it's just a matter of time until we end up with some sort of conflict. When, when we can align our values and we can align culturally on what's gonna get them, the work above and beyond to get them to jump out of bed, , in the morning , and do an incredible job. When that's aligned with what I want for the organization, things work out really well.

So those are the kind of things that I'm probing. How do, is there any

[00:45:50] Ryan Zauk: question you ask that susses it out other than what motivates you? Like how do you grab it?

[00:45:55] Alex Chriss: You know, usually it's sort of like, Hey, where, where do you get your energy from? Like, why do you do what you do? And, , [00:46:00] you'll be surprised.

I mean, you have an answer in your head, right? Um, I mean, it's not the universal answer. I mean, I'll tell you that again. I, I have people that when they answer that question, they go, you know, I want, I want to yap, I want to yacht in, the Mediterranean. And I plan on working for the next 15 years to be able to afford that yacht.

And it's like, Hey, more power to you. That's a fantastic answer. That's not aligned with what I'm trying to drive. Right. But it's great. I know that that's what motivates you. That is what it's, and so I, I think you could just ask like usually some pretty simple questions to understand what makes the person tick.

[00:46:35] Ryan Zauk: And then last question for you, Alex. Who is your dream guest that you would love to hear on a future episode of the this month in FinTech podcast?

[00:46:42] Alex Chriss: I mean, there's so, so much fun stuff going on right now. You know, the person that, , I've gotten to know a little bit that I think, , 3, 6, 9 months from now.

He's doing some really fun things is you start to raben from perplexity. Uh, yes. I, I think perplexity, you know, we've obviously done [00:47:00] a great partnership with them. We've got commerce coming in right into complexity. Um, I also think they've done an incredible job on the financial services side. Mm-hmm. Uh, in terms of being able to.

You know, I mean, I use perplexity now to do finance research on Yes. They just launched it. Different stocks. Yes. It's, it's really good. It's really good. And, you know, getting his perspective as to why did he go down that path? Where does he think the differentiation is? You know, what, what could converse look like, I think could be a fun guest to have, you know, six months.

[00:47:29] Ryan Zauk: Yeah. Uh, that's a great one. 'cause we've also, you know, anthropic just announced their financial services offering. We're trying to see how they're thinking about things as well. Uh, well, great recommendation. We might take you up on that one. Well, Alex. I know we're at time here. I want to thank you for coming on this episode of this month in FinTech podcast.

Fantastic. Having you on and sharing your story with our global audience. Wow, so good to be here. Thanks again, Ryan, and, uh, hope we can talk to you next soon. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to today's episode of the this Month in FinTech. Podcast. If you enjoyed [00:48:00] today's episode, please like, follow, subscribe, or rate us across your preferred podcast and social media platforms.

Lastly, I'd like to thank our editor Evangelo Markou for his great work on our episodes. Signing off. I'm your host, Ryan Zauk.