5% of US Consumers Used PayPal to Make a Purchase in January 2021

More consumers are shopping online, and fewer are shopping in physical stores, since the holiday season. While many began returning to physical stores in December, rushing to make last-minute holiday purchases, consumers’ interest in shopping in stores has since seemingly scaled back.

According to Digital Economy Payments, a PYMNTS report based on a survey of 2,633 U.S. consumers, 26% of consumers used online and mobile channels to make purchases in January, up from 23% in December.

Get the report: Digital Economy Payments

At the same time, 69% of consumers made purchases in physical stores in January, down from 73% in December.

Following the holidays, consumers were ready to jet set. The average amount consumers spent on travel rose from $381 in December to $507 in January — a 33% increase.

Seventy-nine percent of consumers who made travel purchases in January did so online. Most consumers paid for their travel purchases with credit cards. The second most popular payment method for such purchases was digital wallets.

Among the various digital wallet options that consumers have access to today, PayPal is the most popular. Consumers paid for $3.88 billion worth of travel purchases using PayPal, which is greater than all the other major digital and mobile wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Venmo) combined.

Paying with PayPal balance, or the money stored in a PayPal account, is a hot favorite method for digital wallet users. Five percent of consumers made their most recent purchases using their PayPal balances.

Although a relatively small share of consumers use digital wallets to make purchases — with just 9% using them for their most recent purchases in January — a sizeable share of these digital wallet users prefer paying for their purchases using their PayPal balances.