PayPal Holdings increased its technology and development spend while focusing on talent acquisitions in the second quarter.

The payments company’s tech and development spend climbed 9% year over year, reaching $815 million in Q2, according to the earnings release.

“We are focusing our investments in the areas where we have tremendous advantage due to our scale and the inherent network effects, driven by our two-sided data network,” Chief Executive Dan Schulman said during the Q2 earnings call, noting “we are doubling down on checkout, our PayPal and Venmo digital wallets, and our Braintree platform.”

Meanwhile, the company is reinvigorating its organizational operating model and “recruiting world-class talent to our product, engineering and technology functions,” Schulman said.

Still, as tech spend rose, PayPal meaningfully reduced its cost structure, which is expected to result in $1.3 billion in savings in 2023, he added.

In the second half of 2022, the company plans to focus on redesigning its shopping hub and digital wallet, Schulman noted.

SoFi tech spend skyrockets 43% YoY

Challenger bank SoFi also increased its technology and development spend in Q2 to $99.4 million, a 43% YoY increase.

The bank also posted $2.5 billion in personal loan originations, a 91% YoY surge, according to SoFi’s Q2 earnings release. The outperformance was a result of ongoing technology investments in automation and acceleration of the application-to-approval process.

Meanwhile, SoFi’s tech platform revenue skyrocketed to $84 million in Q2, an 85% YoY increase, according to the earnings release. The boost in revenue was partially attributed to SoFi’s acquisition of technology provider Technisys at the end of Q1 and its 2020 acquisition of financial technologies platform Galileo, SoFi Chief Executive Anthony Noto said during Tuesday’s earnings call.

Looking ahead, SoFi management plans to continue investing “heavily” in its technology platform to “capture its significant and accelerating secular growth opportunities across client verticals, products and geographies,” according to the release.

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