PayPal CEO on shifting AI efforts to help small business clients

At Fortune Global Forum last month, Paypal CEO Alex Chriss discussed how the company is shifting its AI efforts to help small business clients.

Transcript

00:00We've been using AI for a decade, as you can imagine,

00:03when it comes to risk and fraud and ensuring

00:05that we've got the data to make the right payment

00:07decisions for people.

00:09But one of the things that we think a lot about now

00:11is with 40 million small business merchants that

00:15use our platform to be able to accept payments

00:16around the world, there's really two paths

00:19that AI can lead us down.

00:21In order to be successful with AI,

00:23you need a tremendous amount of data.

00:25You need a tremendous amount of really good data scientists.

00:28Well, those are two things that small businesses don't have.

00:31So there is one path where the largest merchants in the world

00:34just get really, really good at personalization,

00:37really, really good at ads, really good

00:39to make sure that that Instagram feed is personalized to you,

00:42and the small businesses are left behind.

00:44We see that as our opportunity and our responsibility,

00:47to be honest, to be able to say, look,

00:48let's build a platform where we can leverage the scale

00:51that we have, the data that we have,

00:53and give to our small business merchants

00:55the opportunity to be able to personalize their data,

00:59find the right customer at the right time,

01:01price it in the right way, ensure

01:03that the purchase is done, and then

01:05have the follow-up with a smart receipt that says,

01:07hey, you're a new user.

01:08How would I like to bring you back and maybe give you

01:11a discount so that we can have a follow-up?

01:13And so all of the innovations that we're putting out

01:15are customer-backed and customer-focused,

01:17but leveraging AI and trying to democratize the data that we

01:20have, the data scientists that we have,

01:22the scale that we have, and put it

01:23in the hands of the small businesses around the world

01:26that really need it.