Dan Schulman, the CEO of PayPal, has officially announced that he would be going into retirement from the financial services platform at the end of the current year.
Schulman, who is expected to continue serving on the board of directors for the company, stated that he wants to be able to devote more time to his “passions outside of the workplace.” He became the chief executive for the company back in 2014 in the wake of working as enterprise growth president at American Express.
“I’m proud of what we have accomplished at PayPal and of the incredibly talented and committed people I work with every day,” he stated in a release. “Together, we have reimagined financial services and e-commerce, and worked to improve the financial health of our customers. PayPal makes a difference every day for its customers and communities and the company is positioned for a great future.”
This retirement announcement has been issued just a few months after PayPal, which has taken efforts to de-platform a number of commentators and organizations because of their political beliefs, had revealed an upcoming alteration to its acceptable use policy which would have outright banned the promotion of “misinformation,” along with “hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory.” After being published and reported that the company would be imposing a penalty of $2,500 against users for each and every policy violation, PayPal quickly took it down and claimed the guidelines were made public “in error.”
PayPal ended up losing well over $6 billion in valuation due to the resulting stock market selloff as thousands of people quickly shut down their accounts. One interview held between the World Economic Forum and Schulman which was published a few months earlier showed that the approach from the executive to the business had almost exclusively involved the moving of the needle on social issues just as much as earning profits.
“Trust extends well beyond whether you deliver an excellent product or service. Doing that is very necessary, but it’s not sufficient,” stated Schulman, who currently works on the International Business Council and Board of Governors from the World Economic Forum. “To be a company that embodies trust, your mission and values should make it clear that you stand for more than just maximizing profit. That you stand up for social issues that are important, and you do the right things to help create a better world.”