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CEO Alex Chriss says the changes, including a faster checkout and personalised receipts and ads, will “shock the world”.
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PayPal undergoes AI-driven ‘revolution’
30 January 2024
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10 minute read
PayPal has announced AI-driven upgrades to its interface to “revolutionise” commerce for merchants and consumers, including personalised receipts and online advertisements and a 40 per cent faster guest checkout process.
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CEO Alex Chriss said the advancements would “change the world” of payments and commerce by solving customer pain points.
“PayPal is on a mission to revolutionise commerce, globally, and today we are starting the next chapter,” he said.
“From new solutions for merchants to speed up checkout and personalise offers, to a new consumer app that will give our loyal customers more reasons to shop with PayPal, PayPal has always brought the future of money to our consumers and merchants and today marks the next revolution.”
Mr Chriss, an ex-Intuit executive, took charge of the payments giant last year to oversee growth after it lost over $U290 billion in market capitalisation from 2021 to 2023. In his first public interview last week he said PayPal would “shock the world” with its upgrades.
PayPal’s checkout experience was high up on the list of improvements as the “last interaction between a consumer and a merchant”.
“While it seems so simple, any friction can disrupt the moment,” PayPal said.
Its upgraded checkout interface would reduce latency by around 50 per cent by integrating passkeys and AI to “get smarter and faster over time”.
Lost sales from the “slow and cumbersome” guest checkout process would also be addressed through “Fastlane by PayPal”, an improved, one-click guest checkout experience that merchants could offer customers.
“Customers simply save their information with Fastlane to check out in as little as one tap. No username or password to remember, no personal information to update, and no need to share a credit card with businesses all over the web,” it said.
A pilot program showed Fastlane could recognise 70 per cent of guests and accelerated checkout speeds by nearly 40 per cent compared to a traditional guest checkout process.
Additionally, another feature called “Smart Receipts” allowed customers to track their purchases and receive personalised recommendations on what to buy next from the merchant. This capitalised on the relatively high “open rate” (45 per cent) of PayPal email receipts.
“This could mean tens of millions of merchants and hundreds of millions of consumers seeing timely, hyper-relevant recommendations and rewards in these receipts. This increases the opportunities for merchants to re-engage directly with their customers, increasing the probability of repeat shopping and business growth,” it said.
Recommendations would be created using an “extensive” data set on PayPal users' behaviour with AI.
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