PayPal Partners With Verifone to ‘Win Checkout’ In-Store and Online

When PayPal CEO Alex Chriss spoke with investors during the Q4 2024 earnings call, he made one thing very clear: The number one goal is to win checkout. Today’s announcement of a strategic partnership with Verifone represents another big step by PayPal toward that vision.

“We’ve been laser-focused on cracking the in-store checkout experience,” said Frank Keller, PayPal’s EVP and General Manager of Large Enterprise & Merchant Platforms Group, during an exclusive interview with Karen Webster, CEO of PYMNTS. “For years, our strength has been online. Now we’re bringing that same seamless experience to physical retail.”

The expanded collaboration pairs Verifone’s global hardware footprint — some 35 million terminals worldwide — with PayPal’s Braintree processing infrastructure, now being rebranded as PayPal Enterprise Payments. Keller said that what makes this partnership particularly significant is how it advances PayPal’s enterprise orchestration strategy. The goal is to create an omnichannel platform designed to serve large retailers, restaurants and global merchants and offer enterprise merchants a single platform for data, security and processing across online and physical retail sales channels.

The partnership signals PayPal’s intensified focus on capturing enterprise clients amid rising competition in retail payment solutions. Together,  the companies intend to help merchants reduce operational costs and improve authorization rates.

The joint solution will be incorporated into PayPal Open, the company’s merchant platform also launching today.

“Large merchants are dealing with layers of complexity — and PayPal had yet to seamlessly integrate the many legacy integrations from past acquisitions,” Keller said. “We’re solving that by consolidating everything under PayPal Open.”

PayPal Open is the orchestration layer that gives enterprise merchants access to value-added services, like fraud, disputes and chargebacks, backed by the data from PayPal’s consumer network, with one single integration. Keller says this simplifies the integration lift for enterprise merchants who have to consider and plan for separate integrations each time they want to add a new feature.

Despite the digital ambitions, Keller acknowledges a pragmatic reality: plastic cards aren’t disappearing anytime soon. Despite the rising popularity of wallets at the physical point of sale, cards still dominate at checkout in the store.  Keller said that “winning checkout” isn’t about replacing cards — it’s about making every payment smarter.

“Changing consumer behavior is hard,” he admits to Webster. “That’s why we’re taking a dual approach — working with existing wallets,” a reference to the launch of PayPal Everywhere, which gives consumers a card that can be stored in any mobile wallet, “while preparing for future technologies like biometrics,” that Keller said could see a day where checkout in store is possible without the consumer holding a device.

Keller said that PayPal has invested in technology that helps identify shoppers and personalize their experience in the digital space, with the goal of extending this functionality to physical retail locations. The partnership with Verifone provides PayPal with that direct access to brick-and-mortar retail spaces, effectively bridging the gap between online and physical shopping experiences for merchants and the customers they wish to serve. The work yet to be done lies in determining the best method for this transition — whether through geolocation technology or other means — to establish a seamless connection with in-store environments.

“The card isn’t disappearing, but we can layer value through financing offers and cross-channel loyalty,” he said.

The new expanded partnership with Verifone represents not just technological innovation but signals PayPal’s broader ambition to orchestrate commerce using its powerful two-sided network, one Keller said works for consumers and adds value and volume for merchants.

Keller said to expect the new strategy to kick in during the 2025 holiday season at select enterprise-level retailers.