Paysafe Says Digital Wallet Use Helped Q1 Revenue Jump 7%

Paysafe

Payments platform Paysafe saw a revenue boost due to a rise in digital wallet use.

“We kicked off 2023 by delivering our strongest quarterly revenue since going public,” CEO Bruce Lowthers said in a Tuesday (May 16) press release announcing the U.K. company’s first-quarter earnings.

He noted that revenue rose 7% because of double-digit growth from the company’s digital wallets and eCommerce.

“We are confident in maintaining our full-year outlook and remain very pleased with the progress of our sales transformation initiative, which is driving cross-selling and higher value client wins,” Lowethers said in the release.

Paysafe’s first-quarter revenue was $387.8 million, compared to $367.7 million in the same quarter last year, per the release.

“Excluding a $7.3 million unfavorable impact from changes in foreign exchange rates, total revenue increased 7%,” the company said in the release.

Revenue from its merchant solutions segment increased by 8%, fueled by “strong growth” from eCommerce as well as the small- to medium-sized business (SMB) market in North America.

Digital wallet revenue rose 2% on a reported basis and 6% on a constant currency basis, “driven by underlying growth from iGaming and digital assets, as well as interest revenue on customer deposits, which offset the impact from the Russia-Ukraine war.”

This was Paysafe’s second quarter of positive news. As PYMNTS wrote in March, the company was among the few outliers in a period that has seen several FinTechs issue disappointing earnings results, leading to a “general malaise” that affected practically all of the companies in the PYMNTS FinTech IPO Index.

The news comes amid a rise in the popularity of digital wallets, especially among millennial consumers.

While millennials trail Generation Z among consumer demographics willing to try new methods overall, 67% of millennials said they have adopted digital wallets. Forty-four percent of millennials said they believe mobile wallets can replace most or all features of a physical wallet.

According to “Mobile Wallet Challenge: Replacing Physical With Digital,” a PYMNTS and ACI Worldwide collaboration, millennials continually use the most wallet features of all age demographics, an average 8.1 per user.