Payments platform PayPal to sack 2,000 employees: CEO

San Francisco, Feb 1

Digital payments company PayPal has announced it is laying off 2,000 full-time employees, or about 7 per cent of its global workforce, to address the "challenging macroeconomic environment."

PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman said that these job reductions will occur over the coming weeks, with some organisations impacted more than others.

"We will treat our departing colleagues with the utmost respect and empathy, provide them with generous packages, engage in consultation where required, and support them with their transitions," he wrote in a message shared with PayPal employees late on Tuesday.

He said that while the company made substantial progress in right-sizing its cost structure and focused resources on core strategic priorities, "we have more work to do".

"We must continue to change as our world, our customers, and our competitive landscape evolve. Addressing these changes requires us to make hard decisions that will impact some of our colleagues," the CEO wrote.

Over the next days and weeks, PayPal leaders will share the specific impacts within business units and teams.

PayPal joins a growing list of companies like Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and others in laying off thousands of employees amid the challenging global macroeconomic conditions and recession fears.

In 1999, Elon Musk co-founded online bank X.com, which merged with Confinity in the year 2000 to form PayPal.

E-commerce platform eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002.