PayPal CEO on the future of cash
PayPal has more than 200 million active users who spent $354 billion on the platform in 2016. It faces growing competition from other companies looking to get into the financial technology market, including Apple and Amazon.
PayPal CEO and president Dan Schulman joined “CBS This Morning” to discuss the impact of smartphones, the future of the industry and the key to making payments secure.
“There’s been a lot of predictions about the demise of cash, and they’ve all been wrong. I don’t think you’re going to see cash disappear,” Schulman said.
He added, “Really, the number one reason why you’re moving toward digital payments is the explosion of the smartphone.”
Schulman told “CBS This Morning” co-host Charlie Rose, “I think, Charlie, in the next five years, you’re going to see more change in the financial services industry than you’ve seen in the past 30 as a result.”
When asked to explain how, he said that digital payments are going to help “democratize financial services.”
Schulman said, “Many of the things that we take for granted around the table, like cashing a check or just paying a bill or sending money to somebody you love, is very time consuming. You can stand in line for 30 minutes, 45 minutes just to cash a check. And then it can cost you anywhere between 2 percent and 5 percent of that check just to get cash back in your hands.”
As far as the security of these transactions, Schulman is confident.
“We had $350 billion-plus come through our network last year, over 6 billion transactions. We look at every piece of that data and do machine learning around it so that we can spot fraudulent behavior,” Schulman said.
