At PayPal Beyond 2026, the mood was clear: move with speed and intention.
As leaders gathered in San Francisco, conversations centered on a simple but pressing reality – consumer behavior is shifting fast, powered by AI, and shaped by economic pressure and geopolitical uncertainty. For enterprises and partners gathered here in San Francisco this week, the real question isn’t whether to adapt, it's how fast.
At PayPal Beyond 2026, PayPal gathered senior leaders and key enterprise customers and partners for its annual flagship enterprise customer event on the future of commerce.
PayPal Beyond: Day 1 Recap – Tuesday, April 14
Suzan Kereere, President of Global Markets, PayPal, kicked things off by naming what everyone’s feeling: this is a moment of real volatility. The world is less predictable, change is accelerating, and consumers under pressure are rethinking how and where they spend. Confidence is fragile, and payment preferences are fragmenting globally. Put simply, the rules are shifting – fast.
But alongside that uncertainty comes real opportunity. This is a moment for businesses to adapt, to harness the benefits of AI, and to forge new, stronger partnerships that unlock growth in unexpected ways. Because while the landscape is changing, so too is what’s possible. And that shift is redefining what it takes for enterprises to win.
Enrique Lores, PayPal President and CEO, in discussion with Suzan Kereere, President, Global Markets, PayPal
In his first public address, Enrique Lores, President and CEO of PayPal, set a clear and deliberate path forward grounded in operational efficiency and execution. He reinforced PayPal’s core promise to merchants: unmatched access to hundreds of millions of active consumers, paired with the scale, data, and infrastructure to convert that reach into measurable growth.
But in this moment, differentiation comes from more than capability – it comes from mindset and action. PayPal is leaning in with a focused strategy: investing in innovation, deepening partnerships, and co-building the next generation of commerce infrastructure alongside merchants. This is not about reacting to change, but operationalizing it – turning AI, shifting geopolitics, and evolving consumer behavior into tangible opportunities for growth.
"We are operating in a world that is changing with AI, geopolitical shifts, and evolving consumer behaviors. We need to embrace these changes as opportunities to grow, differentiate, and serve customers in new ways. That mindset is what will differentiate companies that succeed from those that don't." – Enrique Lores, President and CEO, PayPal
Diego Scotti, GM Consumer Group, PayPal, in discussion with Russell Wallach, Global President of Live Nation
Where loyalty, rewards, and timing come together to drive action
Diego Scotti, GM of Consumer, PayPal, framed PayPal and Venmo’s strategy through a dual lens: delivering value to consumers in ways that directly drive merchant growth. He highlighted how PayPal helps merchants tackle their biggest challenges – acquiring customers, improving conversion, and building loyalty – through data-driven reach, seamless checkout, and rewards that keep customers coming back. The result is a powerful flywheel: more relevant, in-the-moment value for consumers that translates into higher conversion, larger baskets, and stronger lifetime value for merchants.
The gap between discovery and purchasing is disappearing – and AI is accelerating that shift
That theme came to life across the mainstage.
Lorry Destainville, Global Head of Monetization and Product Partnerships at TikTok broke down how social and commerce are colliding – fast. The gap between discovery and purchase? It’s closing faster than ever. For enterprises, that means rethinking how they show up earlier in the journey, not just at checkout, and how they create and scale content to meet that moment.
Russell Wallach, Global President of Live Nation, joined Diego on stage to discuss how the two companies are reimagining the fan journey – from presale access and flexible payments through the in-venue experience. Wallach spoke to how Pay Later is helping more fans follow through on plans they’re already excited about, and what it takes to turn a payment partnership into a real growth engine.
Across both conversations, one thing was clear: the funnel is collapsing, and brands need to meet consumers in entirely new ways.
The agentic commerce moment
Michelle Gill, GM of Small Business and Financial Services, PayPal, made it clear: while agentic commerce is on top of everyone’s mind, we're still in the early innings of adoption and consumers are driving intent though discovery. PayPal is the trusted agentic commerce partner to help merchants with this transition through a single integration to leading protocols and surfaces and enabling them to remain the merchant of record with their customers.
Michelle Gill, GM SMB & Financial Services, PayPal, in discussion with Lauren Morr, SVP Digital at Abercrombie & Fitch, Co.
Lauren Morr, SVP Digital at Abercrombie & Fitch Co., joined her to bring the merchant perspective, sharing what it actually looks like to be one of the first adopters, along with the types of challenges they have faced in gaining buy-in and investment early.
The potential for agentic to transform commerce is real. But capturing it requires something most businesses don't yet have: infrastructure that can reach consumers across emerging AI surfaces, backed by identity, reliability and seamless transactions.
That’s the future PayPal is building toward.
"The agentic commerce opportunity is massive for those that move early and thoughtfully." – Michelle Gill, GM of Small Business and Financial Services, PayPal
Beyond the stage
As Kereere reminded the audience, the real value of Beyond isn’t just the speakers, it’s what happens beyond the stage, the conversations, connections, shared sense of willingness to innovate and solve for problems together.
And it’s just getting started.
PayPal Beyond: Day 2 Recap – Wednesday, April 15
If Day 1 of PayPal Beyond set the stakes, a world reshaped by AI, economic pressure, shifting consumer behavior – along with talk of optimism and opportunity – Day 2 got specific. Session after session, one theme surfaced: the infrastructure for what commerce becomes next is being built right now, and merchants and partners willing to build it together will be the ones who lead.
Check-in is the new checkout
Frank Keller, GM of Large Enterprise and Merchant Platform at PayPal, opened with a provocation that could reframe how merchants think about the moment of conversion. Considering only checkout is thinking too far into the process. The real opportunity is earlier, at check-in, at recognition, at that moment a consumer is identified and welcomed before a transaction ever begins.
Frank Keller, GM of Large Enterprise and Merchant Platform at PayPal.
Biometrics are one way to enable that shift. The barrier isn't consumer readiness. It's friction across the experience. The signup process is clunky, and decoupling enrollment from the moment of need is critical.
Keller pointed to a recent study PayPal conducted with users of biometrics technology, showing that while consumers may be initially skeptical, that hesitation quickly disappears once the experience feels seamless and connected. They are willing to use it for payments, and they become advocates after repeated use.
Keller's message to the room was clear: The pieces are coming together, but no single player can solve this alone.
Beyond checkout, an omnichannel opportunity
The omnichannel session brought that thesis into sharp relief. Denise Daly, VP of Gift Cards and Alternate Payments at Sephora, laid out what meeting customers wherever they are actually looks like in practice. Sephora's Beauty Insider loyalty program, built on value, personalization, and experiences, has become a model for seamless omnichannel retail. The goal spans both digital and in-store simultaneously, without the customer ever feeling the transition. For Daly, the question every business should be asking is: "How do we make personalized in-store experiences a habit?"
Denise Daly, VP of Gift Cards and Alternate Payments at Sephora onstage with Himanshu Patel and Frank Keller.
Himanshu Patel, CEO of Verifone, brought the merchant infrastructure perspective. Verifone serves some of the most demanding physical commerce environments, branded retailers, restaurants, and hotels, and the challenges are compounding. Cost of acceptance, authorization rates, and alternate payment methods are table stakes. The harder problem is personalization, as in-store is genuinely difficult terrain for merchants without robust loyalty programs. Consumers want to pay in-store the way they pay online. They want their sales associates armed with the same data and payment options as the digital experience. And the form factors merchants now need to support have grown from roughly three use cases to twelve.
Himanshu Patel, CEO of Verifone.
The through-line across both conversations was simple: consumer demand isn't waiting for infrastructure to catch up. Growth comes to the merchants who close that gap first.
Where the future becomes tangible
If the sessions made the case for where commerce is heading, the Innovation Center made it tangible.
Tucked between sessions, the open space invited attendees to stop, explore, and experience the technologies being discussed on stage. Staffed by PayPal product experts, it became one of the day's most talked-about elements, less a traditional expo floor and more a working glimpse into the future of checkout.
At the Pay Your Way Shop, guests could see firsthand how PayPal is expanding the ways consumers choose to pay, reflecting the same fragmentation of payment preferences Suzan Kereere had flagged from the mainstage. The Commerce Concierge brought the agentic commerce conversation to life, letting attendees interact with AI-powered shopping experiences that are moving from concept to reality faster than most expected. The Check-In Café offered a quieter moment with complimentary coffee and snacks, but even here the experience was intentional, built around low-friction payment flows that made the technology invisible in the best way. And at the Demo Kiosks, guests could go deeper, getting hands-on time with PayPal's emerging checkout innovations at their own pace.
The result was a day that didn't just ask attendees to think differently about commerce. It let them feel it.
AI forces reshaping commerce
Srini Venkatesan, CTO at PayPal, named what is already underway: AI has rerouted discovery. The question is no longer whether agentic commerce is coming. It's whether merchants will be ready when it arrives.
The goal is to build a trusted infrastructure for the entire payment ecosystem, open standards, and security so that any merchant can participate in the agentic era without having to build it themselves. The analogy to the early internet was deliberate: PayPal helped millions of merchants sell online without requiring them to become engineers. The same opportunity, and the same responsibility, exists now. NVIDIA and PayPal are building that infrastructure layer together.
Jane Polak Scowcroft, Snr Dir of Generative AI Data Strategy at NVIDIA, and Srini Venkatesan, CTO at PayPal.
Jane Polak Scowcroft, Senior Director of Generative AI Data Strategy at NVIDIA, brought the view from the infrastructure layer. The next phase of commerce isn't people buying things. It's agents buying on people's behalf. That shift is already visible across industries, from subscription models to supply chain expectations to how merchants think about their own product catalogs. Her advice to merchants was straightforward: Start experimenting now, build the internal capability to test and learn, and treat preparation for the agentic era as a strategic investment rather than a future consideration.
Two days. One clear signal: The future of commerce is being built now, by the people willing to build it together.