So let’s see now. PayPal offers debit and credit payment solutions for both consumers and merchants, transaction services for in person and on-line environments, P2P services through its PayPal brand and Venmo, remittance services globally through Zoom, and through the acquisition of TIO, now provides bill pay services. Here’s more on the TIO acquisition from Finextra:
Vancouver-based TIO serves underbanked customers through a network of 900 unmanned kiosk and across 65,000 retail walk-in locations as well as online and mobile. The company has 10,000 supported billers and processed more than $7 billion in consumer bill payments in fiscal 2016 from 14 million consumer bill pay accounts.
The combination of on-line and mobile capabilities plus physical locations make this addition particularly interesting. One can envision the combination of all of these services brought together into a truly global consumer banking power house. Without a bank charter. PayPal has been making a concerted effort of late to partner with financial institutions. The announcement around the TIO acquisition was clear to state that PayPal is not going after traditional bank customers, but the global population of un-banked:
Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal, says: “By acquiring TIO and integrating bill payment into our global payments platform, PayPal adds another key service in our efforts to become a part of a consumer’s everyday financial life. Worldwide, more than 2 billion people do not have affordable access to basic financial services, making it difficult and expensive for consumers to carry out basic financial tasks, including bill payment. TIO’s digital platform, and physical network of agent locations make paying bills simpler, faster, and more affordable.”
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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