PayPal Holdings Inc (PYPL  ) didn't lose because the world moved too fast - it lost because it chose safety while the world was being rebuilt. In a rare, blistering post on X, former PayPal leader David Marcus argues that a once-iconic payments pioneer systematically traded product conviction for financial predictability, leaving its most valuable asset - 'branded checkout' - crawling at just 1% growth as rivals rewrote the playbook.Branded Checkout's 1% Stall

Marcus says the decisive mistake was optimizing for total payment volume rather than leverage.

PayPal leaned into unbranded checkout, where it had little control, and gradually ceded ground to Apple Inc's (AAPL  ) Apple Pay and Visa Inc's (V  ) architecture - including a deal that curtailed PayPal's ability to steer customers toward cheaper bank-funded transactions.

When eBay volumes later rolled off, the cracks widened, and the company's crown jewel - branded checkout - slowed to a trickle.

From Product-Led To Finance-Led

After the eBay spinoff, momentum persisted under Bill Ready, but leadership shifted from product builders to financial engineers. Marcus argues this cultural turn - prioritizing near-term predictability over platform risk - explains why PayPal treated BNPL as a feature, never a consumer relationship, and why lending never became programmable, identity-driven, or a reason to choose PayPal over anyone else.

Rails, PYUSD, And The Missed Platform

Where Klarna Group PLC (KLAR  ) and Affirm Holdings Inc (AFRM  ) built platforms, PayPal built add-ons. Marcus says the company failed to create its own new rails at scale, and launched PYUSD without embedding it deeply enough to become a real settlement layer or cross-border backbone.

Acquisitions like Honey and Xoom added activity, not strategic leverage, sitting outside the checkout moment that mattered most.

Investor takeaway: With Alex Chriss now out and a hardware veteran tapped as CEO, the question isn't leadership - it's incentives. Unless the board rewrites them, PayPal risks being a great business that never became the network it was meant to be.