First Dividend and CEO Transition: PayPal's Transformation

PayPal Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: PYPL) reported net revenue of $33.2 billion (approximately KRW 44.8 trillion) for its fourth quarter and full year 2025, a 4% increase year-over-year. Total payment volume, operating income and margins all improved, and the company noted strong cash generation alongside continued share repurchases.

For 2026, PayPal guided to a mid-single-digit decline in GAAP earnings per share and a low-single-digit change in non-GAAP earnings per share. It also announced a new quarterly cash dividend of $0.14 per share (about KRW 190) and named Enrique Lores as its next president and chief executive officer.

Lores will officially succeed as CEO on March 1, 2026, joining from HP, while CFO and COO Jamie Miller will serve as interim CEO until that date. The board said it had reassessed the company’s competitive positioning and industry environment, concluding that the pace of strategy execution had fallen short of expectations—prompting the leadership change. Concurrently, David W. Dorman was appointed the new independent board chair.

PayPal is a leading digital payments platform operating in around 200 countries, offering online payments, digital wallets and money-transfer services. It has been a key infrastructure provider for the growth of e-commerce and mobile payments. In a market where big tech’s proprietary systems, global card networks, buy-now-pay-later providers and emerging fintech firms all compete, securing both profitability and growth has become a central challenge for PayPal and the industry at large.