PayPal cancels N.C. move
Won’t build $3.6M global operations center in Charlotte
PayPal is canceling its planned $3.6 million North Carolina operations center because of the state’s new law preventing cities from banning discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, just two weeks after it announced the investment.
It becomes the second, and thus far largest, company to pull business out of the state, with others contemplating similar moves.
Similar political dramas have played out in Georgia and Indiana over controversial religious freedom laws that would have negatively affected gay residents, though with different outcomes in each state.
The North Carolina timeline went very quickly.
On March 18, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory announced that San Jose-based PayPal would build a new global operations center in Charlotte. The center would have employed 400 people. At the time, PayPal’s senior vice president of global operations, John McCabe, said that “with its strong ties to the financial community and technologysavvy talent pool, Charlotte is an ideal fit for this new operations center.”
Then on March 23, North Carolina passed a sweeping law that prevents cities and counties from passing rules preventing discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
On Tuesday, PayPal CEO and President Dan Schulman announced the electronic payment company was withdrawing its plans to build an operations center in the state because the new law perpetuates discrimination and violates the values and principles that he said are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture.
The loss represents an economic blow to Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located. According to the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, PayPal would have invested more than $3.6 million in Mecklenburg County by the end of 2017.
The center was anticipated to yield a payroll impact of nearly $20.4 million per year for Mecklenburg and surrounding counties.
Locating in a state “where members of our teams will not have equal rights under the law is simply untenable,” Schulman said.