Dan Schulman, President and CEO-designee, PayPal

We are moving closer to the day when PayPal will separate from eBay and become an independent, publicly traded company once again, and of course there’s understandable interest in our future, our vision and plans. We’re excited to share our story and you can find a link to the presentation we’ll be sharing with investors this week here.

I believe we’ve entered a period of profound and sweeping change. The proliferation of mobile devices – which have achieved mass adoption faster than any other technology – and the digitization of payments are transforming the way money flows across the global financial system. It’s not just about making buying and selling more efficient. It's really about reimagining and rewiring commerce to make retail experiences that help merchants create more personalized offers, provide unparalleled convenience, and deliver ever more security for their customers. And it’s about reinventing financial services to make it easier, safer, and more affordable for people to move and manage their money.

All of this is creating huge disruption in payments and financial services as dozens of companies jostle with one another to recreate some small part of the complex array of systems and services that make digital commerce possible. But here’s what we believe – no company is in a better position to lead this coming transformation and deliver the benefits that it offers to consumers, merchants, and investors than PayPal.

Our position is unique. We’ve built a comprehensive platform that spans the entire world of digital commerce at a scale that is difficult to match. Our two-sided global digital payments network brings consumers and retailers together in a way that no other company can. Our team is entirely focused on supporting and expanding PayPal’s 165 million active accounts. We are committed to our customers’ trust and privacy. We work every day to make our risk and fraud management technologies, our knowledge of global compliance and financial regulations, our customer service, and our data and analytics capabilities the best in the business.

All of these assets give us distinct competitive advantages as we pursue a rapidly expanding market. Seventeen years ago, PayPal laid the foundation for e-commerce by making it safe and convenient to send money via email. We’ve been driving the expansion of e-commerce ever since, both online and via mobile devices. Together, online and mobile shopping form a $2.5 trillion e-commerce market that is growing at double-digit rates.

But this only hints at the real size of our opportunity. Ninety percent of retail spending takes place in-person, in a store. With mobile devices becoming more and more central to our everyday activities, mobile experiences can bring online and in-person shopping together into a seamless whole. Already for many people, it is sometimes difficult to see clear lines between online, in app or in store experiences. As we help create this new world in which all commerce is digital commerce, our opportunity will be the entire $25 trillion universe of global retail spending, an addressable market that is 10 times larger than the one we have traditionally targeted.

So we approach the day when we will separate from eBay – who will continue to be a key partner –with momentum, huge market potential, unmatched assets, and a strong financial foundation. And we look forward with a clear strategy for realizing our opportunities. PayPal will become an essential part of our customers’ everyday lives by delivering capabilities that enable people around the world to move and manage their money easily, safely, and affordably. We’ll create an operating system for digital commerce that will make us an essential and comprehensive partner for merchants who seek to deepen engagement with their customers. Our scale will provide the efficiency to reinvest in innovation with the discipline required to continue to revolutionize payments and reinvent commerce. We will continue to provide the very best-in-class in customer service and risk management through our 18,000 employees worldwide.

This is an exciting time for everyone at PayPal as disruptive technologies create once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to transform how people shop, merchants sell, and everyone manages their finances. I’m looking forward to talking to investors this week about our vision for the role that PayPal will play as we continue to pursue our long-standing mission to make it easier for people to use their money to achieve their potential than ever before.