Paypal reported 227 million active customer accounts (of which 18 million were merchant accounts) for the quarter ending 31st December 2017 (Q4 2017), adding 8.7 million net new active accounts for the quarter. The company had 29 million net new adds for the full year. The company reported $3.71 billion in revenues in Q4, up 24% year-on-year (YoY).
The Numbers
Active User Base: 227 million active customer accounts, up 15% year on year. This includes — million merchant accounts. These are accounts that have been active for 12 months.
Net adds: 8.7 million net new active accounts added in the quarter, up 25% YoY.
International: 52% of accounts are active outside the US
Transactions per active customer account: 33.6, up 8% year on year.
Transactions: 2.2 billion transactions, up by 0.3 billion from last quarter, and up 25% YoY.
Total Payments Volume: $131.4 billion. Last quarter, it was $114 billion
Average Payment Value: $60, up 6% year over year.
Transaction revenue (transaction fees on payments) grew 23% year on year, while revenue from other value-added services grew 32%. Other value added services include interest, fees on PayPal Credit, loans receivable, subscription fees, gateway fees, revenue from partnerships etc.
Mobile: In Q4, PayPal processed $48 billion in mobile payment volume, representing 53% growth year over year. For the full year, mobile represented approximately 34% of overall payment volume with total mobile payment volume growing 52% to approximately $155 billion for the year.
P2P: 20% of Total Payments Value came from P2P (Venmo, Paypal and Xoom). Venmo, the social payments platform, processed $10.4 billion in payment volume in Q4, an increase of 86% over last year. For the full year, Venmo’s volume increased 97% with almost $35 billion in payment volume processed.
Take Rate (which is Total revenue / Total transaction value): was down with 2.82%, from 2.8% last quarter, and 3% for the same quarter last year. Take rate has been trending down for Paypal. However, Transaction take rate was 2.45%, up from 2.48% last quarter.
One Touch: In Q4, 80 million consumer accounts opted into One Touch (which allows users to remain logged into the system to make payments), up from 40 million a year ago. At the end of 2017, 8 million merchants offered One Touch compared with 5 million a year ago.
Merchant services (non-eBay related) accounted for around 87% of PayPal’s total volume in the quarter, up 33% YoY.
Partnerships: During the quarter PayPal and eBay signed a term sheet to continue to feature PayPal at checkout on the eBay Marketplace through July 2023. Note that yesterday, eBay announced that PayPal will stop processing its back-end payments service in 2020, following which PayPal shares dipped significantly. During the year, PayPal announced partnership with Synchrony Financial to reduce PayPal’s overall risk profile. The company partnered with about 20 of credit card issuers across the world. In Q4, the company announced the launch of its domestic operations in India. And, also expanded its partnership with Facebook Messenger.