By Hannah Lang
(Portal) – PayPal is launching new artificial intelligence-powered products and a one-click checkout feature, the company said on Thursday, as its chief executive looks to breathe new life into the payments giant.
It's the first major announcement under Alex Chriss, who joined PayPal in September, and the new products are another example of how companies are trying to get investors excited about AI, which has helped lift U.S. stock markets hit record highs this month.
Investors are hoping Chriss, who was previously an executive at software company Intuit, will revive PayPal shares, which fell more than 22% from January last year as investors were disappointed by margins. Chriss has called 2024 a “transitional year” for PayPal and promised to grow revenue beyond transactional volume.
“The data that we have and our ability to actually see what people have bought and know what retailers want to target, that's where I think the big opportunity for us lies in AI,” Chriss said in one Interview with Portal.
PayPal will launch a platform this year that will use AI to enable merchants to reach new customers based on their past purchase history, using data from the roughly half a trillion dollars worth of merchant transactions processed globally.
Merchants can also use a separate AI-based tool called Smart Receipts to recommend personalized items to shoppers in their email receipts, as well as a cashback reward.
PayPal is rolling out a “one-click” checkout feature called Fastlane that in early testing has accelerated checkout speeds by nearly 40%, along with new features for Venmo business profiles, the company said.
The S&P 500 index climbed to its fourth straight record high on Wednesday, fueled in part by a rally in technology stocks on AI optimism. PayPal reports fourth quarter results on February 7th.
(Reporting by Hannah Lang in Washington; Editing by Michelle Price and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)