In Q4, 2020, the leading online payment juggernaut, PayPal, had an addition of 16 million in net new active accounts and processed $277 billion in total payment volume.
PayPal’s earnings result is coming out since it started allowing its clients to buy and sell crypto in 2020. It removed the waitlist for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin to all of its 350 million users on November 12, 2020.
Customers who bought such digital assets through its online platform have been spending twice as much time as they were before buying crypto, Paypal said in its investor update.
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“The volume of crypto traded on our platform greatly exceeded our projections,” PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said on the company’s Q4 earnings call. “We’re excited to build on this early success by allowing customers to use their crypto balance as a funding source… We hope to launch our first international market in the next several months.”
PayPal’s transaction revenue surged by around 12% from Q3 to $5.7 billion. It also stated it would categorically recognize transaction revenue from its crypto sales and purchases, but it would not include such transactions related to crypto in its total payment volume.
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“PayPal has been working with regulators and central banks to shape the “next generation of the financial system,” Schulman said. “PayPal is also investing in its crypto business unit,” he added.
In response to an expert’s question on possible acquisitions while digital asset prices are high, Paypal Chief Financial Officer, John Rainey, said that the firm’s appetite for acquisitions is a “multi-year” strategy, but that it’s in a good position to make one.
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“We are unique in the fintech ecosystem as we enjoy outsized growth rates and are profitable,” Rainey said. “That allows us the ability to have this asset where we can look at inorganic opportunities to complement what we’re doing.”
