eBay might be ditching PayPal for Adyen when it comes to payments processing but that doesn’t mean the money giant’s star is waning. It has plenty of irons in the fire and, in particular, PayPal mobile payments are doing very well indeed. And, in particular, PayPal’s Venmo division (that’s ever so popular with American millennials) continues to gain popularity at a decent rate. They say that $12 million is sent via all the PayPal platforms every hour.
PayPal reports that in 2017 they processed $155 billion in mobile payments over the course of the year and that’s a 55% increase over 2016. Across the variety of mobile services that PayPal operates, including Venmo and One Touch, they have more than 80 million mobile consumers globally. And that’s twice as many as the same time one year ago, they say.
2017 was a landmark year for PayPal. We had consistently strong and – in many cases – record breaking results. In particular, the continued rise of mobile payments shows no signs of slowing. We processed $155 billion in mobile payments in 2017, a 55% increase over 2016. The move to mobile is one of the most important trends in global commerce. Today, consumers are spending more time on mobile and that’s presented tremendous new opportunities for PayPal.
– Bill Ready, COO and EVP, PayPal
Whilst the move by eBay to adopt Adyen and “intermediate” payments itself is a blow, PayPal will still be available as a payment service on the marketplace. And as the Wall St. reaction has shown with a slap to the PayPal stock price, the eBay chunk of the PayPal business is important. But it’s not irreplaceable.
A closer look at the PayPal business shows that it is a varied operation with plenty of scope beyond eBay. There’s the Braintree service as well as Venmo that’s going great guns. Venmo processed nearly $35 billion in payments in 2017 and that’s up 95% over the volume it did in 2016.
