PayPal has been revolutionizing commerce globally for more than 25 years. Creating innovative experiences that make moving money, selling, and shopping simple, personalized, and secure, PayPal empowers consumers and businesses in approximately 200 markets to join and thrive in the global economy. For over 25 years, PayPal has transformed how people and businesses manage money globally. With a presence in around 200 markets, it makes online transactions simple, secure, and personalized.
As we look ahead to 2024, PayPal continues to innovate, introducing exciting features like PayPal Complete Payments in China and expanding cryptocurrency options for businesses. Partnerships with companies like Shopify and Fiserv aim to streamline payment processes, enhancing the shopping experience for consumers. Additionally, new tools like Fastlane promise quicker checkouts, while the launch of PayPal USD on the Solana blockchain offers faster and cheaper transactions. Join us as we explore the top 10 news highlights from PayPal, showcasing their commitment to revolutionizing commerce and making financial empowerment accessible to everyone.
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Top 10 News of PayPal for 2024
- PayPal Enables Business Accounts to Buy, Hold and Sell Cryptocurrency
- Introducing PayPal Everywhere
- PayPal Partners with Shopify to Power a Portion of Shopify Payments in the U.S.
- PayPal Expands Strategic Partnership with Fiserv to Streamline Checkout Experiences in the U.S.
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PayPal Introduces PayPal Complete Payments in China
- Access to a vast global user base: PayPal enables transactions in approximately 200 countries and regions, covering more than 100 currencies. With PayPal’s unique two-sided network, Chinese merchants can easily reach over 400 million active PayPal users and billions of international consumers who use card and APM payments.
- Optimized payment experience to drive repeat buyers and elevate operational efficiency: PayPal offers various payment options to international buyers to make the check-out experience even more smooth. The platform enables quick fund settlement, allowing merchants to get quick and easy access to their funds, and a clear view of business with built-in and integrated reporting and analytics.
- Fast cross-border money transfer: PayPal Complete Payments also integrates a one-stop solution for cross-border RMB transactions, featuring products for Chinese merchants including RMB Transfer and Vendor Payouts. This enables simple, fast, and secure global fund management for merchants. By facilitating settlements from PayPal accounts to domestic bank accounts, the customized products address common challenges in traditional cross-border payments, such as complexity, lengthy procedures, and high costs.
- Risk management and fraud detection: PayPal Complete Payments can help merchants take control of risk analysis fraud protection with advanced tools powered by machine learning, AI, and big data, which also reduces time spent managing disputes.
PayPal Enables Business Accounts to Buy, Hold and Sell Cryptocurrency
PayPal is enabling U.S. merchants to externally transfer cryptocurrency on chain to third-party eligible wallets. PayPal business account holders can now send and receive supported cryptocurrency tokens to and from external blockchain addresses.
PayPal has continuously made significant steps to increase cryptocurrency’s utilization. In 2020, PayPal announced the availability of its customers to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency directly from their PayPal and Venmo accounts. In 2023, PayPal announced the launch of a U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD). In April 2024, we enabled PYUSD as a funding instrument for our Xoom platform, allowing users to pay no transaction fees when using PYUSD to fund eligible transfers to friends and family abroad. Most recently, PYUSD was made available on the Solana blockchain, providing users with the choice of multiple blockchains allowing for increased flexibility and control.
Introducing PayPal Everywhere
PayPal has been the go-to solution for online purchases, with the majority of U.S. adults having used PayPal in the last 5 years1. Now, with consumers looking for more ways to save money on every purchase, PayPal is expanding its reward program and its availability to deliver an omnichannel solution to give consumers a smart choice for every purchase, every time. PayPal’s enhanced rewards include the ability to choose a monthly category of spending, such as groceries or clothing, to receive 5% cash back on up to $1,000 in selected category spend per month when using their PayPal Debit MasterCard ® 2. Customers can also stack rewards on top of their monthly category by discovering and saving offers in the PayPal app from top brands including Sephora, Domino’s, DoorDash, Instacart, PetSmart, and hundreds more. For example, if a customer selects Restaurant as their monthly category, they’ll receive 5% cash back3 and another 10% cash back [for a total of 15%] if they save a deal from DoorDash in the PayPal app, which will be automatically applied when checking out with PayPal online.
Every customer has unique needs and individual spending patterns. PayPal’s new auto-reload option empowers them to shop confidently by setting a PayPal balance threshold that automatically tops up if it dips below their chosen amount. Knowing how much is in their balance and customizing it for their shopping needs removes the guesswork and makes PayPal simpler for millions of Americans.
PayPal Partners with Shopify to Power a Portion of Shopify Payments in the U.S.
With a brand-new experience, PayPal wallet transactions will be integrated into Shopify Payments in the U.S., which will streamline the managing of orders, payouts, reporting, and chargeback flows. This enhancement creates a single, unified experience for PayPal and Shopify merchants offering both innovative payment options and operational efficiency.
“We’re excited to strengthen our partnership with Shopify by bringing exceptional experiences for our joint customers,” said Alex Chriss, President and CEO, PayPal. “This showcases PayPal’s growing role as a leading platform of choice for the world’s largest commerce brands, technology companies, and payment processors.”
This latest update in the U.S. builds on the partnership in 2022, when PayPal teamed up with Shopify to introduce Shopify Payments in France.
PayPal Expands Strategic Partnership with Fiserv to Streamline Checkout Experiences in the U.S.
Fiserv and PayPal have partnered for over a decade on a variety of best-in-class merchant and payment functions spanning payment processing, payouts and network services and other ecommerce capabilities across millions of merchants globally. Fiserv is a core strategic partner, delivering technology and capabilities that fuel PayPal’s customer-centric innovation across multiple domains and product lines.
“Fiserv is committed to simplifying the complexities of commerce, creating value for our clients by making it simple for businesses to enable new, engaging experiences for their customer base,” said Jennifer LaClair, Head of Merchant Solutions, Fiserv. “Our expanded partnership with PayPal supports our mission to enhance client value by providing simple, cutting-edge solutions to our clients that elevate and accelerate the commerce experience.”
Fastlane utilizes PayPal’s decades of payment expertise to innovate and accelerate the guest checkout experience – allowing users to complete their purchase in as little as one click. Guest shoppers using Fastlane convert more than 80% of the time, achieve up to 50% higher conversion rates compared to non-Fastlane users, and reduce checkout time by 32%*.
PayPal Expands Strategic Partnership with Adyen to offer Fastlane in the U.S.
Fastlane by PayPal is a new guest checkout experience that helps shoppers convert more than 80% of the time while reducing time to check out by 32% compared to a traditional guest checkout*. When completing their first checkout with a participating merchant, shoppers can save their card and shipping information more easily using Fastlane. This payment and shipping information can then be prefilled automatically on future purchases everywhere Fastlane by PayPal is available.
“Adyen’s customer base and relationships with enterprises makes them the ideal first Fastlane payment processing partner. This strategic partnership aligns with our goal to make PayPal available everywhere customers shop globally,” said Alex Chriss, President and CEO, PayPal. “PayPal has evolved into a platform of choice for the world’s largest commerce brands, technology companies, and payment processors offering seamless and connected commerce experiences to hundreds of millions of consumers and businesses.”
“The expanded partnership with PayPal further strengthens Adyen’s ability to provide global enterprises with seamless payment flows and top-quality guest shopping experiences,” said Pieter van der Does, co-founder and co-CEO, Adyen. “PayPal is a payment brand name that shoppers trust, and we’re excited to take our collaboration another step further in the US, utilizing our combined expertise to raise the bar for our customers.”
Fastlane by PayPal Enables a Faster, Simpler Guest Checkout Experience
“Fastlane by PayPal significantly reduces the time consumers spend using guest checkout – making for a more seamless checkout experience,” said Alex Chriss, President and CEO, PayPal. “With Fastlane, we are bringing an accelerated guest checkout to businesses of all sizes helping them to drive more sales.”
Merchants often lose sales due to lengthy guest checkout experiences. Despite the time-consuming process, guest checkout remains a preferred checkout method for many consumers. In fact, Capterra found that 43% of consumers said they prefer online guest checkout and 72% said they would still use guest checkout even if they have a store account.1 The same research found that 66% expect online checkout to take less than 4 minutes – creating a need for greater simplification and speed when consumers check out as a guest.1
PayPal developed Fastlane to address these challenges, prioritizing the needs of merchants and consumers needs at the core of the product. Fastlane helps merchants recognize consumers early in the guest checkout process using their email, allowing them to access their saved information with a one-time passcode so they may autofill their checkout and complete their purchase in as little as one click. Consumers not recognized during checkout can create a Fastlane profile with a simple opt-in during their checkout experience for faster future checkouts; no forms to fill out or new passwords to remember. Once a consumer has a Fastlane profile, they can speed through future checkouts anywhere Fastlane is enabled.
PayPal USD Stablecoin Now Available on Solana Blockchain, Providing Faster, Cheaper Transactions for Consumers
The Solana blockchain is known for processing massive amounts of transactions at high speeds with extremely low costs, providing significant benefits for commerce use cases. As the most used blockchain for stablecoin transfers, according to data from blockchain analytics platform Artemis, Solana has emerged as the leading blockchain to run tokenized transactions and is ideal for PYUSD as it continues to be used for payment use cases.
“For more than 25 years, PayPal has been at the forefront of digital commerce, revolutionizing commerce by providing a trusted experience between consumers and merchants around the world. PayPal USD was created with the intent to revolutionize commerce again by providing a fast, easy, and inexpensive payment method for the next evolution of the digital economy,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, Senior Vice President of the Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and Digital Currency Group, PayPal. “Making PYUSD available on the Solana blockchain furthers our goal of enabling a digital currency with a stable value designed for commerce and payments.”
“The Solana network’s speed and scalability make it the ideal blockchain for new payment solutions that are accessible, cost-effective, and instantaneous,” said Sheraz Shere, GM of Payments at the Solana Foundation. “Continued adoption from industry participants like PayPal helps realize the next generation of fintech innovation.”
Xoom Enables PayPal USD as a Funding Option for Cross-Border Money Transfers
Xoom’s new option comes at a time when consumers are seeking cost-effective options for cross-border payments. According to the World Bank’s Q3 2023 report, the global average cost of sending $200 is just over 6%. With no Xoom transaction fees,3 cross-border money transfers funded using USD converted from PYUSD provides a lower cost option on Xoom.
By introducing the option to fund cross-border money transfers with USD converted from PYUSD, Xoom now offers an easy and reliable way for U.S. users to send money abroad using PYUSD as a funding source. When this option is selected, Xoom will convert the PYUSD in a U.S. user’s PayPal Cryptocurrency Hub to USD currency with no crypto sale fee, and recipients will receive funds in the fiat currency selected by the sender.
“When we decided to bring PayPal USD to market, we had two objectives we wanted to achieve: create something that had a stable value to maximize user confidence and ensure it had utility for commerce and payments,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, Senior Vice President of the Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and Digital Currency Group, PayPal. “Enabling U.S. users of Xoom the option to fund cross-border money transfers using PYUSD builds on our goal of driving mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies while also offering an easy way to securely send money to friends and family at a lower cost.”
PayPal and Venmo Unveil Six New Innovations to Revolutionize Commerce
During the PayPal First Look keynote, Alex Chriss, President and CEO, introduced: a completely new PayPal checkout experience that radically speeds up check out for consumers and helps merchants convert transactions like never before; Fastlane by PayPal, a dramatically faster and smarter guest checkout experience; Smart Receipts, giving customers AI-personalized recommendations from merchants to keep them coming back; the PayPal advanced offers platform so merchants can provide relevant, personalized, real-time offers to consumers and drive more sales; a reinvented PayPal consumer app giving shoppers new ways to earn cash back and more reasons to use PayPal; and, Venmo’s enhanced business profiles, so small businesses can find and engage new customers, and grow their businesses.
“PayPal is on a mission to revolutionize commerce, globally, and today we are starting the next chapter,” said Alex Chriss, President and CEO, PayPal. “With nearly 400 million consumer accounts, and 35 million merchant accounts, PayPal handles transactions for about a quarter of the world’s e-commerce transactions each year, but more importantly, shoppers trust PayPal to power their payments.”
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Our Take
This year promises to be transformative, with the introduction of PayPal Complete Payments in China, which opens up new opportunities in a dynamic market. Additionally, business accounts will now have the capability to buy, hold, and sell cryptocurrency, further enhancing their financial flexibility.
Partnerships with Shopify, Fiserv, and Adyen are expected to streamline payment experiences, particularly in the U.S., making transactions faster and simpler. The launch of Fastlane aims to improve guest checkout experiences, while PayPal USD on the Solana blockchain is set to revolutionize transactions by making them quicker and more cost-effective. Furthermore, integrating PayPal USD into Xoom allows for seamless cross-border money transfers, enhancing global commerce. Finally, the collaboration with Venmo has led to six new innovations designed to reshape commerce. Today, attendees can look forward to a deeper exploration of these advancements that aim to enhance how people and businesses interact with money.
It becomes evident that 2024 is a pivotal year for PayPal. The strategic expansion into China, coupled with innovations in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, reflects a commitment to providing users with enhanced financial accessibility. Partnerships with major players like Shopify, Fiserv, and Adyen highlight efforts to improve user experiences through advanced technology. The introduction of Fastlane and the PayPal USD stablecoin signifies a commitment to innovation and improved transaction processes. These developments not only promise to enhance user interactions but also empower businesses to thrive in a fast-paced digital economy.
Appreciation is extended for being part of this journey. There is a shared commitment to leading in the evolving landscape of commerce and payments, embracing a future where financial empowerment is accessible to all.
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