Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Strategy at PayPal

Home  >  ESG Strategy

PayPal’s ESG Strategy

PayPal’s mission to build a more financially inclusive and interconnected world is the foundation of our values-led culture, which is grounded in Inclusion, Innovation, Collaboration, and Wellness across our communities, workforce and strategies. Responsibly managing our global business helps to enable us to create value for all of our stakeholders, including our employees, stockholders, partners, and communities.

PayPal’s ESG strategy is an extension of our mission to promote financial wellness and to empower those who are underserved by the financial community. We focus on four ESG pillars that are aligned with our business priorities, shaped by stakeholder feedback and reflect our mission and values. We believe this integrated, enterprise-wide approach to managing our global business responsibly helps to enable us to create value for all of our stakeholders.

2021 Global Impact Report

Learn more: Download the 2021 Global Impact Report



ESG Governance

PayPal recognizes the importance of living our values across all levels of the organization, which reflects our strong commitment to promoting diverse viewpoints through our Board, our leadership, and our workforce. Executive management is continuously engaged on PayPal’s priority ESG-related risks and opportunities.

Materiality Assessment & Stakeholder Engagement

Building on PayPal’s first comprehensive ESG materiality* assessment conducted in 2020, we review our ESG materiality map annually to ensure we remain focused on the topics that are most important to our business, stakeholders and society.

Aligned to our four ESG pillars and informed by internal and external stakeholder feedback, we identified 18 key ESG topics, of which eight have been noted as most critical for PayPal to drive long-term business performance and impact.

An essential aspect of our materiality assessment and the management of ESG risks and opportunities is our comprehensive approach to stakeholder engagement. We solicit continual input and feedback from our global workforce, investors, regulators, customers, partners, suppliers, and local communities through activities such as internal surveys and engagement, multi-stakeholder roundtables, private sector, and non-governmental convenings, discussions with suppliers, and customer listening sessions.

* Used in the context of our ESG strategy and initiatives, the terms “material” and “materiality” are distinct from, and should not be confused with, the same terms as defined by or construed in accordance with securities law or as used in the context of financial statements and reporting.

ESG Principles in Practice

In late 2021, we launched PayPal’s ESG Principles in Practice discussion series to share strategic business updates connected to our priority ESG topics. The inaugural event included insights from company executives and our Governance Committee chair on our overall ESG program, and featured a discussion on our digital asset strategy from the Chief Technology Officer of our new Blockchain, Crypto and Digital Currency team. Visit our Events page for upcoming sessions.

Event transcript

Reporting

Reporting Frameworks

As part of our commitment to transparency, we continuously consider enhancements to our ESG disclosures and reporting and strive for alignment with those frameworks most applicable to our business and most important to our stakeholders. Our Global Impact Report provides specific reporting of our ESG programs, policies and metrics mapped to the following voluntary reporting frameworks and initiatives:

  • The Global Reporting Initiative standards
  • SASB standards
  • The Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact
  • The World Economic Forum Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics
  • The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

We are committed to the continued development of our climate-related disclosures in accordance with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and provide clear reporting on the governance, strategy, risk management and targets through our TCFD Index and our annual CDP climate change questionnaire. We recently enhanced our index to include additional information on our internal environmental sustainability policy, incorporation of climate-related risks into the enterprise-wide risk taxonomy and updates to our environmental metrics and progress on our science-based targets.

Historical reports are available on the Annual Reports and ESG Reporting page.

Diversity and Inclusion

Learn more about Diversity & Inclusion at PayPal

View PayPal’s EEO-1 Reports