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PayPal Holdings Inc.’s latest wallet initiative, PayPal World, will go live this fall and aims to reach more than 2 billion consumers, the company’s chief executive said early Tuesday. Alex Chriss followed up on an earlier announcement of the initiative by stressing how the venture will tie together five of the largest digital wallets from around the world, including Mercado Pago, Tenpay Global, and UPI as well as PayPal and Vemmo.
“It’s five of the largest wallets in the world coming together on a global platform,” Chriss told equity analysts during a call to discuss PayPal’s June-quarter results.
The initiative, Chriss said, is aimed at stitching together what the partners see as a fragmented market globally for digital wallet coverage. For the consumer, this means “you’re never quite sure where your wallet will be accepted,” he said, “so the merchant needs to accept dozens of wallets.”
The confusion of wallets could get worse quickly, Chriss said. Altogether, some 3.5 billion people worldwide “rely on digital wallets,” a number that will grow to 5 billion by next year, he said. The initiative will also include stablecoins, he noted, a move that follows recent action by the United States to sign into law a bill setting out regulations for the cryptocurrency. The GENIUS Act is expected to stimulate faster growth for stablecoins by reassuring market players regarding permissible actions.
Now, PayPal is looking for faster growth in digital currency. The company on Monday announced Pay With Crypto, an initiative Chriss said will let PayPal “tap into a base of 650 million cryptocurrency holders” globally. “It’s a big part of U.S commerce and will be onchain,” he noted.
Chriss also noted another development related to digital wallets by celebrating results for the Venmo peer-to-peer payments service. “There’s something magical happening with Venmo,” he noted. “The team is really killing it.” Total payment volume for Venmo grew 12% in the quarter, up from 8% in the same period last year and from 10% in the March quarter. The product is now growing at “the highest rate in the past three years,” PayPal said in charts accompanying Chriss’s presentation.
“The question was, Can you grow Venmo?” Chriss noted. “The answer is yes.” Moves to capitalize on Venmo’s popularity include recent agreements with universities in the Big 10 and Big 12 athletic conferences to let students use the payments service with cobranded Venmo cards. “The user base is not just growing, it’s engaging in commerce,” Chriss said.
For the quarter, PayPal reported $8.29 billion in revenue, up 5%, on $443.5 billion in total payment volume, up 6%. Transactions came to 6.23 billion, down 5%. Active accounts added up to 438 million, up 2% year-over-year, Branded checkout volume grew 5% in the quarter, “despite tariff headwinds on retail spending,” the company noted.
