PayPal wants to define the future of payments

At Thursday’s Commerce: Rewired PayPal’s CEO, Dan Schulman, said how the digital commerce company intends to “be an everyday part of consumers’ financial lives”.

Schulman went on to stress just how quickly mobile technology is disrupting the payments industry and how PayPal strives to be at the forefront of the disruption.

Commenting on how the volume of cash payments is on the decline, Schulman said; “Mobile technology is driving this transformation – no technology has ever achieved mass adoption as quickly”.

The company says that around one in three of the transactions it processes is made on mobile. Five years ago, mobile transactions constituted 1 per cent of all the company’s transactions.

The event comes at a precarious time for the company. Last week, it was fined $25m for illegally signing up its customers to a credit service. Around the same time, reports have emerged from Australia suggesting that many Australian users were being double charged. PayPal’s only confirmed the reports yesterday.

However, Schulman naturally elected to extol the strengths and prospects of the company ahead of its split from eBay and IPO later this year. He used the event to announce new partnerships and collaborations such as Bigcommerce, which will see the e-commerce software platform’s 90,000 merchants have access to PayPal’s end-to-end solutions.

The company also extended its one-click buy service, One Touch. Now, users will be able to make one-click purchases on mobile apps even if they do not have the PayPal application. According to the company, One Touch has led to 50 per cent increase in conversion rates.

PayPal also made a move to consolidate its user base outside the US. Although the US makes up a staggering three quarters of PayPal’s transactions, new opportunities in countries such as China have become very appealing. The company has announced the launch of PayPal China Connect, that will “link Chinese consumers directly with our network of global merchants”.

Related reading

Leave a comment