Credit Suisse Says PayPal Beating Plastic Online

According to Credit Suisse, PayPal shows it is at no risk of handing over marketshare to credit and debit cards any time soon.

“In addition to its high-growth assets [such as PayPal’s youth-centric money-transferring app Venmo and Braintree, which incorporates cards and PayPal’s payment systems for businesses], we believe legacy PayPal remains a sticky and relevant platform and concerns over losing share to credit cards may be overblown,” Credit Suisse analyst Paul Condra wrote in a report.

That take is based on a survey of users in the U.S., Europe, Russia and China about their use of the PayPal service, excluding Venmo.  China saw the lowest PayPal penetration — but excluding its results saw PayPal being users’ top choice for online purchases. Among those surveyed, 78 percent said they use PayPal for online purchases. During the same time period, 48 percent said they use credit cards online while 45 percent said they use debit cards.

The same survey showed that Amazon is continuing to quietly gain payments steam, as its total subscriber base for Amazon Pay is now 33 million.

PayPal does have a mobile gap — only 23 percent of those surveyed use the PayPal app.