PayPal is laying off nine per cent of its workforce, the company’s CEO Alex Chriss told staff in a letter on Tuesday that PayPal made public hours later.
The decision will impact about 2,500 employees, who will find out their fate between today and the end of the week, Bloomberg reported earlier.
PayPal’s layoffs come almost exactly a year after the company fired more than 2,000 workers to keep costs down.
Despite thousands of job cuts in 2023, layoffs at tech companies have continued into 2024. On the same day as PayPal’s latest layoffs, Jack Dorsey’s Block, the company that owns Cash App, Foundational, and Square, conducted its second round of layoffs in two months, cutting nearly a thousand people.
Earlier this month, Google laid off more than a thousand workers in its Assisstant and hardware divisions, with CEO Sundar Pichai warning employees to brace for more cuts through the year.
Discord, eBay, Riot Games, TikTok, Microsoft, iRobot, Amazon, Unity, and Duolingo, among others, have collectively cut thousands of jobs in January.
PayPal was one of the earliest companies in online payments industry, but in recent years, rivals like Zelle and tech companies with deep pockets like Apple, have entered the space.
The competition in the payments industry is putting pressure on PayPal. Bloomberg noted that four analysts have downgraded the company’s stock this month. The company will “continue to invest in areas of the business we believe will create and accelerate growth,” Chriss said in the letter.
PayPal’s layoffs are happening despite the company’s strong growth throughout 2023. The company’s revenue as of September 2023 was $7.42 billion, an increase of more than eight per cent compared to its revenue a year before.
