E-commerce surged in 2020 and digital payments rode the steep growth curve. In-store payment card use decreased as consumers adopted a stay-at-home lifestyle. This positioned PayPal to continue to grow its already large user base of both consumers and businesses.
Now the company looks to boost accounts and payment volume even more and has set ambitious goals for the next four years. Favorable trends include continued online sales growth, more cashless transactions, and its ubiquitous digital presence. But then, nothing goes straight up and economic conditions will drive consumer spending. What will happen? Check back in 2025.
The following excerpt from a Barron’s article reports more on the topic:
Companies that benefited from the Covid-19 pandemic might be the only ones not looking forward to its end, as they face investors’ questions about how they will keep momentum going. Yet, one isn’t moderating expectations. Instead, PayPal is pushing ahead on an ambitious slate of 2025 goals. The company wants to roughly double active accounts to 750 million from 377 million today and triple total payment volume to $2.8 trillion from $936 billion in the coming years.
Chief Financial Officer John Rainey tells Barron’s that setting the bar high is a logical step for a payments company confident in its importance to consumers, no matter how they shop. That focus on growing speaks volumes about how PayPal has diversified, says Rainey, and the likelihood that recent converts will stay on in a new retail landscape.
Despite all the gains that PayPal has made, Rainey notes there is a lot of opportunity left—in the U.S. and abroad. He notes that in Asia, some 40% of in-store purchases are made with a digital wallet, compared with less than 10% domestically, although American consumers’ appetites are growing after they have experienced the ease of eschewing cash. “Of the many things I look forward to doing after the pandemic, going to an ATM is not one of them.”
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group
