The Growth of PayPal in the UK and Worldwide
You’ve no doubt heard of Paypal – but do you know its long history? PayPal’s establishment dates to 1998 when it was created by Max Levchin and Peter Theil. It was officially launched in1999 as a platform for transferring money. The success attracted eBay, which purchased PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002, and grew the platform until 2015, when eBay and PayPal split into two separate companies. The PayPal brand continued to rise in popularity ever since.
In 2007, more EU countries approved access to PayPal through the EU banking service it obtained. This turned out to be a smart business move because just like that, PayPal got more than 35 million new users from the EU alone, including 15 million from the UK.
Over time, they partnered with MasterCard and it enabled PayPal customers to pay on sites that originally did not support it. By 2007, more than $1.8 billion of revenue was generated. Let’s take a closer look at where PayPal stands today.
Features you Should Know of About PayPal
PayPal currently has 361 million active users, which is an astonishing number, and, according to Statista, PayPal is the most popular payment method in the UK. The average PayPal user conducts around 40 transactions per year, and the popularity of online shopping is shown by the fact that 87.5% of online buyers use PayPal.
The net revenue of PayPal in 2020 was $5.46 billion and it accounts for more than 22% of the online transactions in the US.If you invest in stocks, it’s also worth knowing that PayPal’s share price grew by over 450% over the past five years.
PayPal is now where it is due to their innovative approach in the market, and it is shown by the fact that they used to provide all new accounts with a $20 bonus for every person they refer. This was a good way to attract more clients into using the platform at the beginning.
Speed of transactions is the cornerstone of PayPal, and the latest feature to help with the process is the PayPal One Touch. It is a service that helps people make their transactions faster.Usually, ss soon as you leave your account from a device that you logged in to PayPal, the service will automatically log itself out.
This has changed with PayPal One Touch, as your account is logged in until you decide that you should log out. This is a massive help when you do more than one transaction and payments with different devices. Today, more than 80 million people use PayPal One Touch.
Another aspect of PayPal is its security. All transactions are run on the most secure software on the market to safeguard customers’ funds and personal information. To this day, PayPal haven’t had major security or data breaches which is a testament to the safety of their encrypted technology.
Key Ways You Can Use PayPal
PayPal is ubiquitous – you can use it to pay for items everywhere but let’s focus on the three main ways customers use their funds through this platform.
E-Commerce
PayPal cooperates with hundreds of companies like eBay, Fiverr, Etsy and so on, which means you can use it to make payments on online shops from all around the world. When you see a site collaborating with PayPal, you know that it is safe and secure, and you can shop without any hesitation. The protection offered by PayPal means that companies can utilise and enjoy quick and safe transactions.
Food Establishments
PayPal can be used for both online food shopping and buying food at brick-and-mortar restaurants. As PayPal is so widespread, people are relieved when they see that they can buy their meal using this payment method. Restaurants can easily attract new customers when they integrate PayPal into their payment option, particularly if you’re a foreign tourist and want to take advantage of PayPal’s exchange rates and low fees.
PayPal Casinos
PayPal is ideal to be used at online casinos, and nowadays, there are tonnes of PayPal casinos and slot siteson the UK market. PayPal and other e-Wallets tend to have the fastest deposit and withdrawal times, and that is key for any punter playing their favourite games. Everyone wants to have secure and fast transactions, and PayPal casinos offers exactly that. For that reason, online casino players tend to use PayPal more than the traditional payment options, such as credit/debit cards.
Final Thoughts
Even with such massive growth over the past few years, PayPal is expected to become even more popular as it adds more currencies, branches into the world of cryptocurrency payments and launches an updated and more seamless mobile application. It is safe to assume that PayPal is the market leader when it comes to payment methods, and the facts and statistics are there to prove it.