PayPal Turns to Instagram and Others as eBay Volume Drops

PayPal grew revenue 12% in the first three months of 2019 (Q1) to $4.13 billion, it announced on Wednesday, and it grew total payment volume (TPV) by 22%, or 25% on an FX-neutral basis, to $161 billion.

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman noted in the company announcement, “We launched new strategic relationships with some of the world’s largest marketplaces and platforms including Instagram and MercadoLibre.”

The announcement also revealed that eBay’s poor Marketplace performance in Q1 impacted PayPal. Under the heading, “PayPal’s key business drivers,” the company noted that eBay Marketplaces volume declined 4% on an FX-neutral basis versus growth of 6% in Q1 2018, representing 9.7% of PayPal’s TPV for the quarter versus 12.7% a year ago.

It also noted strong growth in non-eBay areas: Its own Merchant Services volume grew 29% on an FX-neutral basis in the first quarter. Person-to-Person (P2P) volume grew 41% to $42 billion, representing 26% of TPV, and its Venmo unit processed $21 billion of TPV in the first quarter, growing 73%.

eBay is transitioning to its own payment processing system, while keeping PayPal as a payment method (buyers pay eBay, which then disburses payments to its sellers). Yesterday, eBay said it was expanding Managed Payments to a second market, Germany, as allowed under the operating agreement with PayPal following the 2015 split.

The press release quoted Schulman:

“We had a great start to the year, with strong growth in revenue, net new active accounts and engagement across our platform. We launched new strategic relationships with some of the world’s largest marketplaces and platforms including Instagram and MercadoLibre. We now have 277 million customer accounts, including 22 million merchant accounts and over 40 million active Venmo accounts. We are confident in the 2019 targets we outlined last quarter as we continue to leverage our wide range of unique assets in our global digital payments platform.”

See the full press release on the PayPal investor relations website.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.