What a quarter century of digital transformation at PayPal looks like
From 2016 to 2022, the company went from processing a payments volume of $354 billion to $1.36 trillion last year.
From 2016 to 2022, the company went from processing a payments volume of $354 billion to $1.36 trillion last year. This growth, says Shivananda, “needs to be supported by a technological architecture that can grow by increasing capacity, and without requiring heavy engineering, reconstruction, or re-architecture work.” In other words, scalability.
Finally, there’s efficiency. “As we work in these areas, we must closely monitor efficiency and spend to ensure our cost per transaction is the lowest, and that we maintain operational excellence in all technological areas.”
To face these challenges, PayPal has a highly qualified tech team, and last year, global investment in technology and development was more than $3.2 billion. “Our technology workforce operates on a global scale and in all regions, so we learn different lessons from each one, which we apply in the rest of the markets where we operate,” says Shivananda. “This also allows us to have the best in terms of global technology, fraud mitigation and prevention, and cybersecurity measures in all markets, all while complying with local regulations and compliance requirements.”
Technological layers
To make all these strategic areas flow as smoothly as possible, PayPal’s technology is organized into four main layers. At the lowest layer is the infrastructure, made up of databases and data lakes. These applications live on innumerable servers, yet some technology is hosted in the public cloud. This combination allows the company to connect customers around the world and deliver the speed, value and reliability they’ve come to expect. User data is also housed in this layer, including profile, behavior, transactions, and risk. So it’s, in short, the structural skeleton of PayPal.
The second layer is made up of a set of technologies that underpin all PayPal products and services. “We call them foundational platforms and they allow us to efficiently use the underlying infrastructure,” he says. These platforms are made up of a series of functionalities, such as internal tools for developers and engineers, or services such as caching, messaging, password management, and cryptography, “It’s vital for our business,” he adds. “It’s like PayPal’s nervous system.”
The next layer, called Common Platforms, is where the technology that makes up the products and services is located, comprised of identity (user authentication), payments (transactions), risk (trust and security), compliance (fulfilment of obligations in all jurisdictions), privacy (protection of contextual information), taxes, finance (money movement), and treasury (money management). This is, according to Shivananda, the brain of PayPal.
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