PayPal Statistics, Usuage, Users. revenue And Facts For 2021

In 1998, Max Levchin, Russel Simmons, Luke Nosek, Yu Pan, Peter Thiel, and Ken Howery founded Confinity as a security software development company. PayPal started as an inter-division company within Confinity in 1999 for a money transfer service. In the year 2000, it merged with Elon Musk’s X.com and re-christened as PayPal in 2001.

In February 2002, PayPal went public on Nasdaq exchange under the trading symbol PYPL by listing 5.4 million shares @$13.00 per share for a total of $70.2 million. However, the San Jose, California headquartered company’s public status had short-lived as it merged with eBay in July 2002.  The acquisition became effective on October 3, 2002, and subsequently delisted from the stock market. E-Bay purchased the entire share of PayPal for $1.5 billion. (Benzinga)

Highlighted PayPal Statistics

The following are the summarized statistical information of PayPal.  Before moving forward, the given information will work as a vital tool to have a comprehensive understanding of PayPal, its revenue, demographics, and transaction details.

  • Presently, PayPal has 305 million active users. (Pymnts)
  • PayPal customers do an average of 36.9 transactions in a year. (Spendmenot)
  • eBay paid $1.5 billion for acquiring PayPal. (Spendmenot)
  • PayPal used by 87.5% online buyers. (Spendmenot)
  • PayPal’s revenue for 2019 was 17.77 billion. (Statista)

PayPal Acquisitions:

Looking at the history of PayPal, we can find acquisitions and merges are part of its business strategy. Ever since storming to the stock market with public share offers, the euphoria short-lived when they decided to merge with eBay and got separated from eBay in 2015. And after that, they maintained an aggressive acquisition strategy. They acquired most of its potential competitors before it is too late and improved its business potentials.

  • In October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal after its IPO. The acquisition was for $1.5 billion, and the shares were valued at $23 then. (Wikipedia)
  • In 2005, PayPal acquired VeriSign payment solution to broaden its e-commerce horizons for $370 million. (Paymentssource.com)
  • In January 2008, PayPal acquired Fraud Sciences for $169 million. It was an Israel based startup that built fraud management systems with its online risk tools. (Acquiredby.co)
  • In November 2008, PayPal acquired Bill Me Later- a digital payment system that allowed instant transactional credit in the US at more than 9,000 merchant outlets. The acquisition was for $945 million. Later PayPal rebranded it as PayPal Credit. (Ebayinc.com)
  • In April 2011, PayPal acquired Where.com and Fig card. PayPal paid $135 million for buying where.com. In Fig, users can make physical payments using phone Wi-Fi to connect with USB at the purchasing station. Where.com lets merchants connect with local consumers. (Acquiredby.co)
  • In October that year, PayPal acquired Zong for $240 million. Zong facilitated purchases to charge on the consumer phone bills. (Fastcompany.com)
  • In July 2012, PayPal acquired Card.io- the software that allowed users to scan their cards for account details through the phone camera. (Paymentssource.com)
  • The year after, PayPal acquired IronPearl in April. IronPearl tracked user journey on websites and tested ways to bring them back to the sites. (TechCrunch.com)
  • In September 2013, PayPal acquired Braintree in its largest acquisition t0 date for $800 million. It also ended up buying Braintree’s subsidiary Venmo for $26.2 million, as part of the deal. (Acquiredby.co)
  • In December 2013, PayPal acquired the StackMob-a platform that helped developers create businesses by helping them make applications was also acquired by PayPal. (Venturebeat.com)
  • In September 2014, eBay separated PayPal into an independent public traded company.
  • In March 2015, PayPal acquired Paydiant-a cloud-based mobile wallet platform for $280 million and CyActive-a cyber-security company preparing clients for potential cyber threats for $60 million. (Acquiredby.co)
  • In July 2015, PayPal led another major acquisition of Xoom Corporation for $890 million. Xoom allowed customers to conduct transactions from the US to 70 other countries. (Forbes.com)
  • By mid-July 2015, PayPal has become a separate entity from eBay.
  • The next month, PayPal acquired Modest Inc. for an undisclosed amount. It allowed merchants to drag and drop purchase buttons to web pages where consumers usually saw the products. (Forbes.com)
  • In February 2017, PayPal acquired the cloud-based bill payment processing platform TIO Networks for $233 million. (Crunchbase.com)
  • Later that year in August, PayPal acquired Swift Financial-the secure network for information relay in financial institutions for $183 million. (Forbes.com)
  • In May 2018, PayPal acquired the fintech company iZettle, dealing in a wide range of financial products for $2.2 billion. (Crunchbase.com)
  • The next month, PayPal completed yet another acquisition of Hyperwallet for $400 million. Hyperwallet allowed ACOP to transact funds into over 170 countries in more than 150 currencies. (Crunchbase.com)
  • Followed by the acquisition, in June 2018, PayPal took the ownership of Simility-a fraud prevention solution providing company for $120 million. (Crunchbase.com)
  • In September 2019, PayPal acquired a 70% stake in GoPay for an undisclosed amount. PayPal became the first foreign company to provide an online payment option in China through this platform. (Pymnts.com)
  • The latest acquisition of PayPal, also the most significant, was of Honey for $4 billion in November 2019. Honey allows users to find deals through its mobile app and browser extension. (Techcrunch.com)

PayPal User Growth

Users:

  • By the end of Q4 of 2014, PayPal had 161.5 million active registered users on its platform. (Statista.com)
  • Within a year, this number increased to 179 million active users. (Statista.com)
  • At the end of the 4th quarter of 2016, there were 197 million active registered users on PayPal. (Statista.com)
  • PayPal’s registered active users increased to 229 million by Q4 2017. (Statista.com)
  • Towards the end of Q4 of 2018, PayPal had 267 million active users. (Statista.com)
  • By the end of the 4th quarter of 2019, PayPal had 305 million active accounts. (Statista.com)

Merchants:

  • At the end of Q4 of 2016, PayPal had 15 million merchant accounts. (MarketPlacePulse.com)
  • By the end of July 2017, PayPal had 17 million active merchant accounts (MarketPlacePulse.com)
  • At the end of FY 2018, in January 2018, PayPal had 18 million merchant accounts. (MarketPlacePulse.com)
  • The merchant account increased to 19.5 million merchant accounts by the end of Q2 of FY 2019 in July 2018. (MarketPlacePulse.com)
  • At the end of Q4 of FY 2019 i.e., January 2019, PayPal had 21 million merchant accounts. (MarketPlacePulse.com)
  • At the end of April 2019, PayPal had 22 million active merchant accounts. (DMR)
  • In Q2 of FY 2020, at the end of July 2019, PayPal had 23 million merchant accounts. (MarketPlacePulse.com)
  • By November 2019, the number of merchant accounts had grown to 24 million. (Techcrunch.com)

PayPal Usage by Numbers:

  • 5% of digital buyers use PayPal. (SpendMeNot.com)
  • In December 2016, PayPal had 31.6 transactions for each active account on average. (PayPalreport 2017)
  • In December 2017, there were 34 transactions per account. (PayPalreport 2018)
  • On average, PayPal users conduct 36.9 transactions annually at the end of December 2018. (SpendMeNot.com)
  • As of January 2020, an average PayPal account conducts 40.6 transactions throughout the year. (DMR)
  • An average user has $485 in their PayPal account. (SpendMeNot.com)
  • PayPal has been gaining customers from MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, Maestro- basically traditional credit and debit card providers. (Trends.com)
  • However, it has been losing customers to other competing wallets such as Apple Pay, Bancontact, UnionPay, Sofort, and WebMoney. (Trends.com)
  • As per the Ipsos study conducted in July 2018, based on 7 of the top 10 PayPal markets found that 54% of people were willing to close a purchase transaction if they could pay by PayPal. (PayPal.com)
  • 59% of PayPal users would abort a transaction if PayPal weren’t available as a payment option. (PayPal.com)
  • Around 58% of e-commerce businesses offer PayPal as an alternate payment option, if not primary. (Transaction)

Transactions and Payments

PayPal offers multiple payment options depending on your requirements. The options include PayPal Cash, PayPal Cash Plus account balance, PayPal Credit, PayPal credit or debit cards and rewards, etc. You can set the preferred choice for making payments, and if you do not have preferred payment options, then also it is not an issue to make the payment. The account is simple to use, no need to punch the large card numbers. The following are some of the vital transaction/payment statistics of PayPal.

  • 25% of the total volume of PayPal transactions was through mobile and tablets in January 2015. (MarketPlacePulse.com)
  • In 2015, payments made through PayPal amounted to $281.76 billion. (Statista.com)
  • In 2015, PayPal was processing around 4.9 billion transactions annually. (DMR)
  • In January 2016, 25% of the total transaction volume of PayPal was through mobile and tablet devices. (MarketPlacePulse.com)
  • In 2016, $354 billion worth of payments were through PayPal. (Statista.com)
  • At the end of 2016, PayPal had processed 6.1 billion transactions throughout the year. (DMR)
  • In January 2017, mobile and tablets accounted for 31% of the transaction volume of PayPal. (MarketPlacePulse.com)
  • In 2017, the total amount of payments made through PayPal was $451.27 billion. (Statista.com)
  • By 2017 end, PayPal’s number of processed transactions increased to 7.6 billion. (DMR)
  • By January 2018, mobile processed 36% of the total volume of PayPal transactions. (MarketPlacePulse.com)
  • In 2018, PayPal processed around 9.9 billion payments worth $578 billion. (SpendMeNot.com)
  • In January 2019, 41% of the total volume of PayPal transactions was on mobile devices. (MarketPlacePulse.com)
  • In 2019, PayPal’s total payment volume increased by 23% to $712 billion. (Statista.com)
  • In 2019, PayPal processed 12.4 billion transactions on its platform. (DMR)
  • In July 2019, 43% of the total volume of transactions was through mobile. (MarketPlacePulse.com)

PayPal Demographics:

  • PayPal is present across 200 countries and regions. (PayPal.com)
  • It supports transactions in 25 different currencies. (PayPal.com)
  • Of all PayPal users, 43.8% are out of the USA. (SpendMeNot.com)
  • 61% of the users are from Germany. (SpendMeNot.com)
  • 39% of PayPal users are from the UK. (SpendMeNot.com)
  • 32% of PayPal users are French, and 4.62% are out of Australia. (Martech)
  • 56% of users are in Italy, 2.54% are in Spain, and 2.35% are Canadian. (Martech)
  • In terms of the age bracket of users in the USA, 87% of millennials use PayPal. (SpendMeNot.com)
  • As opposed to that, only 15% of Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y use PayPal for online transactions. (SpendMeNot.com)

Global Presence:

  • PayPal had 9.5 million users in France as of July 2019. (DMR)
  • 39,450 websites use PayPal in France. (SimilarTech.com)
  • At the same time, there were 6.8 million PayPal users in Italy. (DMR)
  • 35,059 websites in Italy use PayPal. (SimilarTech.com)
  • In Germany, PayPal had 23 million active users at the end of July 2019. (DMR)
  • 56,461 German websites use PayPal. (SimilarTech.com)
  • The UK is the largest European PayPal market, with 26 million active users, as reported in July 2019. (DMR)
  • 66,387 websites in the UK use PayPal. (SimilarTech.com)
  • Spain, on the other hand, has 5 million active users in 2019 July. (DMR)
  • 21,897 Spanish websites use PayPal. (SimilarTech.com)
  • 22,913 Indian websites have PayPal integrated. (SimilarTech.com)
  • Russia has 31,278 PayPal integrated websites. Canada has 30,942 websites, and Australia has 26,406. (SimilarTech.com)

Financials:

Revenue:

  • At the end of December 2014, PayPal had $8.02 billion in net revenue. (PayPalreport 2016)
  • Out of this, the net income for 2014 was $419 million. (PayPalreport 2016)
  • For 2014, transaction revenues contributed $7.1 billion, and other value-added services added $918 million. (PayPalreport 2016)
  • As of December 31, 2015, PayPal’s annual revenue was $9.25 billion. The net income for this year was $1.23 billion. (PayPalreport 2017)
  • On December 31, 2016, PayPal’s annual revenue touched $10.84 billion. Net income at the end of the year was $1.4 billion. (PayPalreport 2017)
  • For 2016, the transaction revenues were $9.5 billion, and other value-added services contributed $1.25 billion to the revenue. (PayPalreport 2017)
  • The revenue further increased to $13.09 billion at the end of December 2017. For the same year, the net income increased to $1.79 billion. (PayPalreport 2018)
  • In 2017, PayPal generated $11.5 billion from transactions and $1.59 billion from value-added services. (PayPalreport 2018)
  • In 2018, PayPal’s gross revenue was $15.45 billion, and the net income was $2.05 billion. (PayPalreport 2018)
  • During the end of December 2018, it had generated $13.71 billion in transaction revenues and $1.74 billion from other services revenues. (PayPalreport 2018)
  • In 2018, PayPal made INR 2.58 billion in revenue from its Indian platform, which was a massive jump over the INR 210 million in revenue in 2017. However, in FY 2018, PayPal lost INR 28 million in India. (ForbesIndia)
  • In 2019, PayPal’s annual revenue was $17.772 billion, which shows a 15% growth comparing to 2018. (Dazeinfo)

Revenue of PayPal from 2010 to 2019:

In the following, the statistics illustrate the annual revenue of PayPal from 2012 to 2019. In 2019, PayPal’s combined revenue touched $17.77 billion from $15.45 of the previous year. The significant parts of the incomes are from transaction revenues and value-added service charges. The split of revenue for the year 2019 was $16.1 billion and 1.67 billion, respectively, for transaction revenues and value-added service charges.

Expenses:

  • In 2015, PayPal spent $985 million for marketing and $947 for product development. The total operating expenses that year were $7.7 billion. (PayPalreport 2016)
  • In 2016, PayPal spent $969 million on sales and marketing expenses. Out of the total $9.2 billion operating expenses, PayPal spent $834 million for product development. (PayPalreport 2017)
  • By 2017, the sales and marketing expenses increased to $1.1 billion, and the product development expense rose to $953 million. The total operating expenses for this period were $10.96 billion. (PayPalreport 2018)
  • As of 2018, PayPal spent $1.3 billion on marketing and $1.0 billion for product development. The operating expenses for this year were $13.25 billion. (PayPalreport 2018)
  • PayPal invested $750 million in MercadoLibre in 2019 (DMR)
  • It also has invested $500 million in Uber (DMR)

Conclusion

PayPal has dominated the online payments market for years. With the advent of other digital wallets such as Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and Google Pay, it is facing the heat of competition in the digital money transaction market. PayPal already started capitalizing on foreign markets a few years ago. However, how it plans to compete with local successful digital payments in those markets is crucial to the growth and sustenance of the company. The company has tremendous growth opportunities in the Asia-Pacific and Latin American regions. Its investments and partnerships with GoPay, Union Pay, and MercadoLibre would effectively help the company maintain its global dominance in the digital payment world.

Reference Links

https://www.benzinga.com/general/education/15/06/5569267/remember-when-paypal-went-public-13-years-ago

https://spendmenot.com/paypal-statistics/

https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/20/paypal-to-acquire-shopping-and-rewards-platform-honey-for-4-billion/

https://trends.builtwith.com/payment/PayPal/Market-Share

https://www.forbesindia.com/article/leaderboard/how-paypal-aims-to-grow-market-share-in-india/55479/1

https://www.paypal.com/stories/us/people-are-54-more-willing-to-buy-when-a-business-accepts-paypal

https://transaction.agency/ecommerce-statistics/paypal-transactions-have-70-higher-checkout-conversion-than-non-paypal-transactions/

https://acquiredby.co/paypal-acquisitions/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_PayPal

https://www.forbes.com/sites/madhvimavadiya/2018/05/18/paypal-acquisitions-fintech/#12a76f252002

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/paypal/acquisitions/acquisitions_list#section-acquisitions

https://www.pymnts.com/earnings/2018/paypal-earnings-mobile-volume-user-growth-barclays/

https://www.paypal.com/in/webapps/mpp/country-worldwide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal

https://martech.zone/paypal-statistics-online-payments/

https://www.paymentssource.com/slideshow/9-of-paypals-defining-acquisitions

https://martech.zone/paypal-statistics-online-payments/

https://www.marketplacepulse.com/stats/paypal/paypal-mobile-percentage-of-total-volume-104

https://www.similartech.com/technologies/paypal

https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/paypal-statistics/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/277841/paypals-total-payment-volume/

https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/11/ebay-paypal-ironpearl/

https://venturebeat.com/2014/02/12/paypal-closing-down-backend-service-stackmob-months-after-buying-it/

https://www.pymnts.com/news/partnerships-acquisitions/2019/paypal-closes-on-gopay-acquisition-enters-china/

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/paypal/acquisitions/acquisitions_list#section-acquisitions

https://acquiredby.co/paypal-acquisitions/

https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/ebay-inc-adds-bill-me-later-to-portfolio/

https://www.fastcompany.com/1765603/paypal-buys-zong-ensure-its-mobile-payments-future

https://investor.paypal-corp.com/static-files/d7ce101a-3219-4cc2-a538-2e3bb9ffea3c

https://www.statista.com/statistics/419783/paypals-annual-payment-volume/

https://www.similartech.com/technologies/paypal

https://investor.paypal-corp.com/static-files/7865d64a-27e1-4f18-bf29-d372cdb800f4

https://www.marketplacepulse.com/stats/paypal/paypal-number-of-active-merchant-accounts-105

https://www.statista.com/statistics/419767/paypal-annual-segment-revenue/

https://investor.paypal-corp.com/static-files/7bfecebd-ac1a-4d50-a9fb-41ebd8f98eea

https://www.forbes.com/sites/madhvimavadiya/2018/05/18/paypal-acquisitions-fintech/#12a76f252002

Researched by Brian and SaaS Scout team
Researched by Brian and SaaS Scout team

This website uses cookies to deliver a relevant and personalized service. By continuing to browse or clicking “Okay, I agree” or "Close", you approve the site's T.O.S and Privacy Policy These cookies are completely safe and secure, and will never contain any sensitive information.