Dive Brief:
- Archana Deskus is leaving Intel to become PayPal's chief information officer starting Monday. Previously, Deskus was Intel's senior vice president and chief information officer. Now, she will oversee PayPal's global information technology operations as an executive vice president, the company said Monday.
- Deskus will report directly to president and CEO Dan Schulman. In her new role, she will focus on optimizing internal technology processes and systems, Schulman said in the announcement.
- With the new appointment, PayPal is splitting out the CIO role once again after it was combined with the chief technology officer post in 2018, a PayPal spokesperson said by email. Bradley Strock served as PayPal's global CIO until 2018. After he retired, the role was folded into the CTO post.
Dive Insight:
PayPal's appointment of Deskus, a seasoned CIO with stints at Timex, Baker Hughes, Ingersoll Rand and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, comes after a pullback in earnings and user projections.
In its Q4 2021 earnings report, PayPal said it no longer expected to meet a previously set goal of 750 million active users by 2025 as the company reduces its focus on luring more users and increases its attention to user engagement. Revenue growth projections for 2022 were also pulled back from 18%, to between 15% to 17%.
Deskus joins the San Jose, California-based payments company following a period of intense investment in tech and engineering.
Under the company's new user strategy, Schulman said on the company's earnings call last month that he suspects account acquisition will revert to what it looked like before the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.
Indeed, that’s already showing up in the company’s results for last year, with a 39% drop in net new active accounts for the fourth quarter compared to the period last year, and a 33% decline in such accounts for the full year, relative to 2020, according to PayPal’s report.
On the February earnings webcast, Chief Financial Officer Rainey said a decline in users was also tied to the company's decision to jettison about 4.5 million accounts that were created by "bad actors" attracted to its incentive programs. He also pointed to a slowdown in e-commerce, especially among lower-income consumers; supply chain jams; inflation; and a decrease in stimulus funds for consumers.