(Bloomberg)—PayPal Holdings Inc. CEO Dan Schulman’s campaign to expand the payments platform beyond websites and into stores keeps impressing investors.
The company projected revenue of $3.57 billion to $3.63 billion in the current quarter, showing the PayPal is persuading more shoppers to use the platform as a digital wallet and a payment button for online orders. Analysts on average estimated $3.56 billion. Continuing investor confidence has propelled the company’s stock 70% higher this year.
Total payment volume, or the overall dollar value of payments processed through PayPal’s platform, increased 30.5% to $114.05 billion from $87.40 billion in the third quarter ended Sept. 30.
Active customer accounts were 218 million in the third quarter, up 13.5% from 192 million a year earlier. Transactions per active account were 32.8 compared with 30.2 in the year-ago period.
Schulman’s latest move has been expanding PayPal’s Venmo service beyond peer-to-peer payments like splitting a restaurant tab to a method for paying merchants directly. Venmo is now available at more than 2 million U.S. retailers, PayPal said Tuesday. The service handled transactions worth $9 billion in the third quarter, almost double from the period a year earlier, the San Jose, Calif.-based company said Thursday in a statement.
Venmo’s expansion is complementing earlier deals with credit card issuers, banks and Apple Inc.,No. 2 No. 2 in the Internet Retailer 2017 Top 500, to increase the places where PayPal is accepted. The momentum will continue as bricks-and-mortar retail chains seek help transitioning to the digital age in which more customers shop with their computers or smartphones, said AB Mendez, an analyst with Frost Investment Advisors.
“The street gives Schulman a lot of credit for having a strategy,” he said. “PayPal is the great hope for anyone looking to compete with Amazon.” Amazon.com Inc. is No. 1 in the Top 500.
The company split from online marketplace eBay Inc. two years ago to speed its transition from a payment button on websites into a financial tool that lets people pay merchants and send money to friends through smartphone apps.
Schulman wants PayPal accepted in stores where most purchases still occur. He hopes to lure shoppers with time-saving features such as apps that let them order ahead and skip lines to encourage the transition from cash and credit cards to mobile wallets. The one-touch feature of mobile wallets means shoppers can quickly pay with their smartphones using saved account information.
For the third quarter ended Sept. 30, PayPal reports:
- Net revenue of $3.239 billion, up 21.4% from $2.667 billion during the same time last year.
- 900 billion payment transactions, up 25.7% from 1.512 billion.
- S. net revenue of $1.743 billion, up 21.4% from $1.436 billion.
- Transaction revenues, which are fees PayPal charges consumers and merchants based on the volume of activity processed through its platform, of $2.833 billion, up 22.4% from $2.314 billion.
- Net income of $380 million, up 17.6% from $323 million.
For the first nine months of 2017, PayPal reports:
- Net revenue of $9.350 billion, up 18.9% from $7.861 billion last year.
- Net income of $1.175 billion, up 16.2% from $1.011 billion.