The Shakeup PayPal Needs

Rumors are that a substantial organizational change at PayPal is in progress. Frankly, it’s overdue. For any global payments company to succeed, its leaders must possess a deep, almost intuitive, understanding of the global payments ecosystem. This is where PayPal is currently failing.

We have a CEO, Alex Chriss, known as a product specialist. While he may be excellent at getting products out the door, this is not the problem PayPal faces. Unfortunately, the team can’t see the forest fire given their conspicuously poor payment background. For example, look at Diego Scotti as EVP and GM of the consumer group. His experience comes from Verizon, and his chief credential is that he is the husband of Janey Whiteside, one of Alex’s closest payment advisors. When growth doesn’t happen and targets get missed, investors begin to look for the reasons and the resumes of those running the ship.

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2025 Tech Tsunami will Expand Network Role (and VAS)

A snarky blog. My views on why the role of card networks will grow in the midst of this change (along with Network VAS).

Buckle up buttercups, because the commerce, banking, and payments world is getting a facelift so extreme, it’ll make a Kardashian look like a Luddite. If you thought Web 3.0 and its decentralized pipe dreams were the next big thing, bless your heart. AI and Agentic Commerce are the actual party, and they’re about to flip the table.

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Could Stripe Drive eCom Stablecoin Adoption? (A: Maybe, but they wouldn’t do it)

Following up on yesterday’s discussion about the potential for US Banks to issue stablecoins, the fintech world is abuzz after Stripe’s Sessions announcements covering AI and stablecoin. Given Stripe’s massive influence,  any move they make warrants attention. The question on many payment strategy executives’ minds: Is Stripe about to unleash stablecoins to circumvent traditional card rails for consumer payments? While the crypto-evangelists might be shouting “yes!”, a more pragmatic and skeptical view suggests this is highly unlikely, at least for the core retail checkout experience.

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Commercial Models for AI Agents

Short Blog.. but core to a new series that will attempt to address this strategic question

I find it hard to believe that anyone could keep up with the daily technical updates in AI, the pace of innovation is truly astounding. Given the completion of my recent agentic commerce survey, I thought I’d provide a few of my thoughts on the uncertainties surrounding the economics associated with AI agentic architectures.  While the technology is fascinating, the market operation of AI and Agents is nascent. How is value measured? How will it be monetized?  Who has the pricing power?  How will this impact existing markets, systems and participants? My perspective here is based upon my experience in networked businesses, but even more so in measurement (as CEO/Founder of Commerce Signals).

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Understanding Merchants – Cards on FIle

Why merchants prefer cards they control. Implications for Agentic, Pay By Bank and beyond… 

Short Blog. My last blogs on the topic were Acceptance Hurdles (2022) and the more technical list of 14 core processing activities in Acceptance Part 1 (2016). 

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Real-Time Settlement Coming to US Cards?

US Payment Infrastructure is in the midst of completing a major renovation. 

  • The Clearing House (TCH) Real-Time Payment (RTP)
  • FedNow
  • JPM’s ONYX (now renamed Kinexsys)

Let me preempt the #1 question most of you are about to ask “are card volumes at risk”? Nope, why on earth would banks want to walk away from the most profitable retail banking product in the history of man (see Future of Retail Banking)!?

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eCommerce 2025 – Wallets, Share Shift, Conversion Rates and Key Segments

© Starpoint LLP, 2025. No part of this site, blog.starpointllp.com, may be reproduced or retransmitted, in whole or in part, in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner. Also, see our Legal/Disclaimer (this is a highly opinionated and partially informed blog).

My estimates for how US eCom market share will shift in next 3 yrs are at the end of this blog.

eCommerce is not a single monolithic market. There are many “segments” to optimize that vary by geography, retailer type, consumer device, customer type (guest vs loyal), transaction type (recurring vs new), ad type, payment type,…etc. A great source of this information is Monetate (highly recommend). For example, let’s look at conversion rates by industry, device and region.

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