PayPal CEO sees staff working from home more often after virus

A person uses a laptop computer while working from home in Illinois, US. Schulman said it might take until late summer of 2021 or even the early fall before any vaccine has seen enough uptake for PayPal to begin bringing more workers back to the office. — Bloomberg

PayPal Holdings Inc employees will probably spend more time working from home even after the coronavirus pandemic is over.

The company envisions the vast majority of staffers splitting their time between working from home and from one of the company’s offices, chief executive officer Dan Schulman said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The firm employed about 23,200 people globally at the end of last year, with almost half based in the US.

“I don’t think we’re ever going back to what was,” Schulman said. “Some people will forever be at home, and others will be more in the office, but the vast majority will be some kind of three-two hybrid,” he said, referring to the number of days spent working from each place.

Promising Covid-19 vaccine trials have prompted many employers to begin weighing how they’ll ultimately return workers to offices after sending them home in droves earlier this year to stem the virus’s spread. Schulman said it might take until late summer of 2021 or even the early fall before any vaccine has seen enough uptake for PayPal to begin bringing more workers back to the office.

Separately, Schulman said demand for a new PayPal service that allows users to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies has been overwhelming, with an early wait list for the offering attracting two to three times as much interest as the company had expected. The company is planning to let customers use cryptocurrencies to fund their transactions on the PayPal platform starting early next year.

“That will fundamentally bolster the utility of cryptocurrency, really moving it from kind of an asset class today to more of an ability to use it in everyday transactions,” Schulman said. – Bloomberg