Shillong, January 31: In line with the prevailing trend of workforce reductions and cost-cutting strategies, fintech giant PayPal has declared its intention to trim down 9% of its workforce, resulting in the elimination of 2,500 positions across its global offices.
As per India Today, PayPal CEO Alex Chriss conveyed in an internal memo to employees that the objective is to enhance focus and efficiency and appropriately ‘right-size our business.’
This reduction in jobs will be implemented throughout the year, impacting both existing roles and positions that PayPal had initially planned to fill. Affected employees are expected to receive notifications about their job terminations by the end of the week, according to the internal memo.
In his memo to staff, Chriss emphasized the need to drive more focus and efficiency across the organization, deploy automation, and streamline technology to minimize complexity and redundancy. Despite the job cuts, PayPal aims to persist in investing in areas that it believes will foster and accelerate growth.
As of the end of 2022, PayPal had approximately 29,900 employees. This move echoes a similar reduction carried out in January of the previous year, where 2,000 employees were let go globally. The current decision will affect around 2,500 workers, bringing the total count of layoffs to approximately 4,500 employees.
The layoffs appear to be a response to PayPal’s challenging revenue and share performance, with a more than 20% decline in shares over the past year and a lowered full-year forecast for adjusted operating margin. Increased competition from rivals like Apple Inc. and Zelle has further added to the company’s struggles in maintaining its lead in the digital payments sector.
This workforce reduction aligns with a broader trend in the tech industry, where numerous companies, including Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, TikTok, Salesforce, and others, have collectively laid off about 25,000 workers in the first month of 2024 as part of their cost-cutting and restructuring initiatives.
The wave of job cuts was initiated by Google, followed by Amazon, Salesforce, and Microsoft, among others, all citing various challenges from heightened competition to profitability pressures.