PayPal reported strong results for Q416 and 2016 in general, revenues were up. And also we’ve reported that PayPal will be amending their legal terms and conditions.
But one aspect of PayPal’s successful 2016 hasn’t been remarked upon so much: that’s the striking adoption of the PayPal One Touch system. As we wrote before, it boasted 21 million users in April of last year after about six months and it seems like it’s been going great guns ever since.
PayPal predicted that One Touch, available in 200 countries, would attract 36 million users by the end of 2016. It’s done a touch better and now has 40 million users globally. That’s a significant chunk of PayPal’s 197 million accounts worldwide.
Obviously the increase in mobile use is critical to One Touch’s success. But so is convenience in general. And it is so very easy to use once you’re all set up.
PayPal’s Head of Global Partnerships Anuj Nayar says of the development: “There is a lot of competitive pressure all over the world to capture consumer and merchant share at checkout – and those two things are highly interdependent. I think what you have being seeing with PayPal — particularly with the rollout of One Touch — is an incredibly powerful demonstration of what a platform player like PayPal can do when it has the ability to connect the merchant with the consumer in an easy and seamless way.”
“This is far and away the most adopted product in PayPal history. When we are looking at 40 million users and five million merchants who’ve opted in — you’re starting to see real, real traction around this now. The checkout conversion rate is almost 90 percent — 87.5 percent, to be exact.”
It’s rather like Amazon Prime. Sometimes some things are just so convenient and easy for consumers that using them becomes a convenient habit. It’s also good to see Paypal innovating and competing with the likes of Apple and Android Pay in the payments space.
