Will I be PayPal’s downfall?

Dan Schulman, the president and CEO of PayPal, gave an interview earlier this year entitled: ‘The thing that separates good companies from great ones: trust.’ He told the audience that companies need to do more than deliver an outstanding product to build trust. In addition, they need to ‘stand up for social issues that are important’ and ‘do the right things to help create a better world’. Ironically, it is precisely because PayPal has been energetically pursuing this agenda that trust in the company is beginning to evaporate.

I don’t think it’s too vainglorious to say that PayPal’s current difficulties began in the middle of last month when, without any notice, it closed the accounts of the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic, both of which I run, as well as my personal account. Getting any coherent explanation out of the company as to why it had done so proved difficult – it kept coming up with different reasons.