PayPal CEO Dan Schulman is making friends out of enemies

Led by Dan Schulman, PayPal’s stock price rose 80 percent this year — quite a feat for a 20-year-old company.

As CEO, he oversaw partnerships with rivals, including some of the world’s biggest tech and financial institutions including Google, Apple Facebook, Visa, Mastercard and Baidu.

“People who everyone thought would compete with us are now very close partners. Like Facebook — many of their payment ­initiatives are done through our platform, and 50 percent of Apple Pay comes through our platform,” Schulman told Fortune last month. “So over time the competitive environment has become more benign for us than aggressive.”

It has paid off. Last quarter, PayPal added 6.5 million accounts — up 80 percent from a year earlier — bringing its userbase to more than 210 million active accounts. PayPal subsidiary Venmo also saw huge growth, with transaction volume doubling year over year.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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