PayPal Posts 25 Pct Jump In Payments Volume

PayPal posted results Thursday (Oct. 18) after the markets closed that showed double-digit growth in overall transaction volume and payments volume, and high single-digit boosts in the number of payments per active account.

In terms of stats that Wall Street watches, the company earned $.58, beating projections by $.04. Revenues were up 14 percent to $3.7 billion, which was better than the Street predicted by around $20 million.

The company quickened its pace of active accounts added at 9.1 million in the latest quarter, better than the same metric of 8.2 million accounts added in the year-ago period. The company ended the latest period with 254 million active accounts, which represents 15 percent growth year on year.

Total payment transactions stood at 2.5 billion, which marked a 27 percent gain, and were nearly paced by $143 billion logged in total payments volume, which were up 25 percent on an FX neutral basis. Transactions per active account, said the company, were up 9.5 percent on a trailing 12-month basis to 36.5 payments per account.

Within the total payments volume, person-to-person (P2P) volumes were up more than 50 percent to $36 billion. Transactions done across the Venmo app were $16.7 billion, gaining 78 percent year on year.

In a bit of color on Venmo, CEO Dan Schulman told analysts, on a conference call following the Thursday earnings report, that the individual count of people using Pay with Venmo was up 185 percent in September, as measured against August’s tally. Standout volume here included Venmo being used across Uber and Uber Eats, where there was a sequential monthly jump from August to September of 300 percent.

Schulman told analysts that Venmo is at “a tipping point,” even though efforts with the P2P payments app are in early stages. He said that as many as 24 percent of Venmo users have completed what he termed to be a “monetizable action,” which is a jump from 17 percent in the second quarter. The month of September saw $1 billion in instant-transfer volume processed through Venmo.

The Venmo debit card — the physical card linked to PayPal that debuted earlier this year — also saw triple-digit growth from August into September, up 320 percent, where use was strong.

During the conference call, CFO John Rainey shed light onto a dwindling dependence on eBay, which accounted for 11 percent of PayPal’s payments volume. Three years ago that percentage was 20 percent.

PayPal said that 112 million consumer accounts opted into One Touch and 10.4 million merchants now offer One Touch. Roughly 89 percent of total payments volume was merchant services, non-eBay marketplaces related — and the company said its volume, driven primarily by PayPal and Braintree, was eight times higher than eBay’s marketplace volume. Mobile was 40 percent of total payments volume and grew 45 percent year on year.

Management also noted on the call that PayPal business financing solutions — which includes PayPal working capital and PayPal business loans — provided customers more than $1 billion in funding last quarter. This more than doubles the $480 million in funding in the same period last year.