Beware Fintechs Outside ‘Regulatory Boundaries’: PayPal CEO

This pandemic brought “this dramatic acceleration of people moving to a digital lifestyle,” PayPal CEO Dan Schulman told a J.P. Morgan investor conference virtually Thursday. How people work, play, pay and consume their entertainment -- “all of that is moving to the mobile phone,” and people “are staying there at elevated levels,” he said. The new smartphone “super app” that PayPal launched days ago, featuring a new two-day “early access” direct deposit component, was a “substantial upgrade to where we were from a consumer perspective,” he said. But it’s only the first “iteration” of an app PayPal plans to improve with each passing quarter, he said. Any company like PayPal that wants to be “a major financial services player” needs to be “world-class at regulatory compliance,” said Schulman. “We operate in 200 different jurisdictions around the world,” under 67 “different regulatory frameworks,” he said. It has “great engaged relationships with all the regulators,” he said. “If there are emerging fintechs who think they can play outside the regulatory boundaries, they're wrong.”