PayPal · Go-to-market · Mid · 45 to 60 minutes

How should PayPal grow its web wallet?

PayPal is an online payments company that lets people and businesses send, receive, and pay money on the internet. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Growth strategy
Unit economics
Go-to-market
Prioritization
Experiment design

The situation

In 1999, PayPal has recently pivoted away from its PDA wallet into a web checkout and email based payments product. Early users like the simplicity of sending money with just an email address, and some small online sellers are starting to accept it. The founders and head of marketing ask you, a PM on the payments growth team, for a go-to-market recommendation for the next two quarters. The company finally sees signs of product-market fit, but it is still young, cash is tight, and every growth bet could either accelerate adoption or waste scarce resources. The hard part is that PayPal only becomes useful when the other side of a transaction is also on the network. You could push a paid referral loop to get more people to invite friends, invest in a major merchant or marketplace integration, or take a slower organic path while the product matures. Assume the product has about 30,000 monthly active users, around 60 percent of transactions are person to person, a newly activated user generates about $15 in 12 month gross profit, and the team can fund only one major growth bet immediately.

What to produce

Write a 1 page go-to-market memo, 600 to 800 words.

Your answer must

State the primary growth objective for the next two quarters and the target user segment you would prioritize.
Recommend one primary go-to-market motion and explain why it best fits PayPal's product and network dynamics.
Show rough unit economics for your proposed motion using the assumptions given, including what would make the plan financially viable or not.
Outline a launch plan with the first experiments, rollout scope, and any messaging or product changes needed.
Define the metrics and guardrails you would use to decide whether to scale, adjust, or stop the program.
Briefly address the strongest alternative you did not choose and why you would defer it.

Constraints

Only one major growth program can be resourced immediately in the next quarter.
The plan must protect user trust and payment reliability, obvious spam or degraded checkout experience is unacceptable.
Cash burn matters, any paid growth recommendation needs a path to payback rather than open ended subsidy.
External partner dependent plans carry timing risk and are not fully under PayPal's control.

Format

Use sections: objective, target users, channel choice, economics, launch plan, metrics, risks.

How PayPal actually played it

Reviews PayPal's growth phases, early referral program, merchant integration, years under eBay and lessons about putting users first.

Grow only after product-market fit
Pay for referrals when economics work
Big merchant integrations unlock scale

Built from PayPal: The Original Product Growth Company by Aakash Gupta (Product Growth).