Mobile payment volume jumps 45% while PayPal’s active users increase 10% to 179 million.

PayPal Holdings Inc.’s revenue increased 16.9% to $2.56 billion in the fourth quarter from $2.19 billion in the year-ago period. It was PayPal’s second three-month reporting period since separating from online marketplace eBay Inc. in July.

For the year, revenue grew 15.2% to $9.25 billion from $8.03 billion in 2014.

PayPal processed $20 billion in mobile payment volume in Q4, up 45%, PayPal said Wednesday when it reported quarterly and full-year results. Mobile payments account for 25% of total payment volume in Q4.

81% of the company’s revenue in the fourth quarter came from processing online transactions for merchants, PayPal said. Much of the remaining revenue comes from processing transactions by consumers who use PayPal to buy online. Among the Top 1000 online retailers in North America, 202 use PayPal as their payment processor and 466 accept PayPal, according to Top500Guide.com.

PayPal’s mobile peer-to-peer payment app Venmo processed $2.5 billion in total payment volume in the fourth quarter, a 174% year-over-year increase, the company said.

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Analyst Colin Sebastian, an e-commerce analyst at investment firm Robert W. Baird & Co., says in a note to investors that PayPal management plans an aggressive merchant rollout of “pay with Venmo” this year, but that it’s not expected to impact revenue until 2017 or 2018.

PayPal also is growing its OneTouch mobile payments feature, introduced in September 2014, which lets a consumer with a PayPal account that is linked to her mobile device complete a purchase on that device with just one touch. More than 15 million users have opted in to use PayPal OneTouch in the past six months, a 115% increase from 7 million announced in the company’s third quarter earnings call, Sebastian says. PayPal plans to roll out OneTouch to 100 new countries in the next six months, Sebastian says.

During the earnings call, PayPal said more than 50% of retailers in the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 500 Guide and more than 1 million merchants in 23 countries have OneTouch enabled to make it easier for their customers to check out quickly and securely. The company expects that number to grow significantly throughout the year as it rolls out OneTouch to another 100 countries in the next six months.

Sebastian says OneTouch’s impressive uptake should drive growth for PayPal.

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For the quarter ended Dec. 31, PayPal also reported:

  • Active users, or those who use PayPal at least once a month, grew 10.5% to 179 million from 162 million a year ago. Active users are those that sent or received at least one payment or payment reversal in the past 12 months.
  • The number of transactions processed increased 24.8% to 1.428 billion from 1.144 billion.
  • Net income rose 28% to $367 million from $286 million.
  • U.S. revenue jumped 25.2% to $1.302 billion from $1.040 billion.
  • International revenue increased 9.1% to $1.254 billion from $1.149 billion.

For the full year, PayPal reported:

  • Revenue increased 15.2% to $9.25 billion from $8.03 billion in 2014.
  • Net income jumped 193.1% to $1.228 billion from $419 million.

“As money becomes digital and the world goes mobile, we see tremendous opportunity ahead to expand our leadership, transform the way people move and manage their money and deliver increased value to shareholders,” CEO and president Dan Schulman said.

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