This article is based on a presentation given by Rik when he held the position of Senior Director of Enterprise Customer Success at PayPal at our Customer Success Festival, Amsterdam in 2024.

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The payments industry is competitive, and retaining and growing your customer base is more challenging than ever. 

With businesses closely monitoring performance and constantly evaluating alternatives, it’s not enough to simply offer a service—you have to fight for your business every single day. 

As someone who has spent years leading global customer success teams at PayPal, I’ve seen firsthand how crucial it is to go beyond just processing transactions and focus on building deep, value-driven relationships with customers.

In this article, I’ll walk you through the strategies we use at PayPal to stay ahead in the dynamic world of payments, from driving growth to future-proofing our business through innovation. 

We’ll cover:

  • The scale of PayPal’s operations
  • The role of customer success managers at PayPal
  • The focus on retention and growth
  • The power of leveraging AI and customer feedback to future-proof our operations
  • How we’re positioning PayPal to revolutionize commerce, not just payments

The scale of PayPal’s operations

Most people are familiar with PayPal already, but I want to share with you what we are doing to be the best customer success organization in the payments industry. I’m going to show you what it really means to fight for your business every day, every hour, and every second, because that’s what we have to do in customer success at PayPal.

PayPal is 25 years old and as of 2024,operates in over 200 markets globally. We have 35 million merchants – online shops – using PayPal every single day. Additionally, we’ve reached 426 million PayPal accounts. Now that's a staggering number!

Last year, we processed $1.5 trillion in payments. To give you some context, that accounts for 25% of all global e-commerce outside of China. That’s a huge portion of the world’s online transactions flowing through PayPal.

This is what excites me about working for PayPal. We’re fueling the global economy, driving commerce not only for large platforms but for countless small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). SMBs are truly the bedrock of PayPal. Our two-sided platform, which connects consumers and merchants, is what gets me and my team out of bed every morning.