PayPal Statistics & Data for 2024

As someone who accepted PayPal as a payment method, I had a lot of hardships. I want to help you in your research to know whether PayPal is worth using.

Hence, I wrote this list of statistics. From there, you can better gauge PayPal's performance compared to other payment processors.

Let’s see what their numbers are like.

Top PayPal Statistics of 2024

• PayPal has more than 429 million active users as of 2024.
• They have more than 26 billion transactions.
• $1.53 trillion in volume in 2024.
• More than 27,200 employees across 27 countries and from 144 nationalities in 2023.
• They have a 39.21% global market share.
• 90% of online stores in Germany use PayPal as a payment gateway.
• Over 70% of American adults used PayPal in 2023; 9% of children make up for their user base.
• Their data centers are 100% powered by renewables (globally).
• As of June 30th, 2024, they have $12.2 billion in debt.
• Between 2019 and 2021, there has been a 400% increase in BNPL. 
• They have a 39.21% market share as of 2024.

What’s PayPal’s Revenue?

As of June 2024, PayPal’s revenue is $7.89 billion and its net income is $1.13 billion.

And its net profit margin is 14.31%.

This is a 5.96% increase from their $7.42 billion in revenue increase from September 2023. It’s also a 10.78% increase from their $1.02 billion net income in the same year.

PayPal’s revenue for 2023 was $29.771 billion.

An 8.19% increase from their $27.51 billion in revenue in 2022.

PayPal’s gross revenue is 91% more than Stripe’s $14.4 billion in 2022. And PayPal’s net income in 2022 was 2.149 billion.

32% less than Stripe’s $3.2 billion in the same year.

Stripe doesn’t release official revenue data. Thus, this is “reportedly registered” data.

That doesn’t explain how they’ve done in the past…

I’ll get to that now.

PayPal Revenue by Year

Here’s PayPal’s revenue throughout the years:

PayPal has increased annual profits by $26.2 billion since 13 years ago.

This isn’t net income, though.

Annual Net Income by Year

Here’s PayPal’s annual net income by year since 2012:

Their net income fell by more than 70% once the pandemic subsided in 2022. But it stabilized again after 2023.

Let’s see the statistics that I should have covered.

Additional Revenue Statistics for PayPal

Let’s see some revenue statistics for PayPal:

• 26 billion transactions according to their Q2 2024 earnings presentation.
• They reported a transaction volume of $403.9 billion in the same quarter.
  • This is an 11% year-over-year increase.
• Revenue from international operations
• Contribution to PayPal’s international transaction revenue increased by 0.58% between Q4 2022 and the same quarter in 2023.

These numbers seem good.

But how has their user base been?

How Many People Are Still Using PayPal?

As of Q2 2024, PayPal has 429 million active merchant and consumer accounts [1].

“Approximately” 400 million of these accounts were for buyers. “Tens of millions” of these were seller accounts.

How does this compare to the previous year?

PayPal had 6 million fewer accounts than the 435 million total accounts in the same quarter in 2023.

Active accounts only refer to having a single purchase within the previous 12 months. Let’s see how many accounts buy things monthly.

They had 222 million monthly active accounts in Q2 2024 (3% year-over-year growth).

That’s 5 million more accounts than were on the platform in Q2 2023. But 2 million fewer than in Q4 of the same year.

We know the number of people using it in general.

But how does PayPal fare against other payment gateways?

PayPal Market Share

As of 2024, PayPal has a 39.21% market share in the payment gateway industry. Making it the number 1 most used payment processor globally.

Stripe is the second most used processor, with 38%.

Otherwise, these less-used payment processors have the following market share percentages:

• Authorize.net: 5.57%
• Square Point of Sale: 3.98%
• AfterPay: 2.24%
• Visa: 1.69%
• Braintree: 1.50%
• Chargebee: 0.86%
• Recurly: 0.86%
• Sezzle: 0.78%
• Venmo: 0.64%

And here are the percentages of online stores across the world that offer PayPal as a payment method [2]:

This data suggests that Germany leads the world in PayPal adoption for online payments. Even more so than the United States, which I’ll talk about in the next section.

The following countries use the following as alternatives to PayPal:

• South Korea: KakaoPay and Naver Pay are the most popular.
• Japan: PayCEC is the most popular payment gateway here.
• China: Alipay, which had a 54% market share in 2022.

PayPal has less than 20% of use in the above 3 countries.

Why didn’t I include America in this section?

Because it needs a separate area.

What Percentage of Americans Use PayPal?

Over 70% of American adults used PayPal in 2023. Among Generation X, usage rises to 85%. For Millennials, it's 75%. Baby Boomers show 73% usage.

9% of children use PayPal in the US. I couldn’t find the age range for what sources defined as “children.” This percentage also came from 2020.

Here’s a quick reference on what age groups each of the above terms references:

Other information suggests that 78% of online stores used PayPal in the first quarter 2024.

56% of point of sales systems (POS) used them:

Screenshot from Statista

This data suggests that online usage for PayPal has decreased by 22% since Q1 of 2021.

However:

This period was during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which their year-over-year increase was 29%.

The numbers are likely stabilizing and don’t appear to have a further declining trend.

Information from 2021 suggests that 54% of PayPal users in the United States are female. And 46% are male [3].

Those are nice numbers. Do their revenues reflect the impressive statistics above?

General E-Commerce Statistics for PayPal

Here are other statistics that could have been included:

• PayPal has more than 2,400 strategic commerce partners.
• Their total payment volume increased by 11% to $416.8 billion in 2024.
  • Compare that to their $376.538 billion in Q2 2023.
• More than 200 countries accept PayPal.
• The payment platform supports 25 currencies.
• Customers using PayPal convert 60% more often than others.
• $1.53 trillion in total payment volume.
• More than 26 billion transactions.
• PayPal users buy things 60% more frequently than non-users.
• 20% of repeat buyers use PayPal.

As of Q2 in 2024, 4% of consumers used PayPal as their digital wallet for non-grocery purchases. That’s a sharp decrease from the 4.6% usage in Q1.

Part of that is due to more people using Apple Pay. In the same quarter, 5.5% of people made purchases with Apple Pay.

Here’s a chart to visualize what I mean:

Source: PYMNTS

PayPal has had a decrease in usage, while Apple Pay has increased.

Do they get a lot of transactions, though?

PayPal Transactions by Year

Here’s how the number of transactions rose over the years:

As most businesses saw growth in online shopping during the pandemic, PayPal saw over a 25% increase in transactions between 2019 and 2020.

Another part of PayPal saw massive growth during this period.

Buy Now, Pay Later Statistics

According to PayPal, 37% of Generation Z use buy now, pay later (BNPL). There has also been a 400% increase in BNPL adoption between 2019 and 2021. 

They estimate that transactions with BNPL will increase to nearly $450 billion in 2026.

And here’s the popularity of BNPL among different age groups:

• 25 – 44: 50% of total BNPL users
• 45 – 54: 33%
• 55+: 19%

They also suggest that 40% of buy now, pay later users canceled or delayed an order when BNPL wasn’t available. Suggesting that there’s an increasing demand for this type of service.

With PayPal Pay in 4, customers can split their purchases into 4 interest-free installments over 6 weeks with 0% APR. 

Or they can opt for Pay Monthly with 9.99 – 35.99% APR.

For larger purchases, PayPal Pay Monthly provides longer repayment terms of up to two years but with interest charges.

All options allow customers to manage their spending and potentially avoid upfront costs. Making big-ticket items more accessible.

How does this help sellers?

BNPL boosts merchants' sales by offering flexible payment options.

Thus, businesses can increase average order value, convert more shoppers, and tap into a wider customer base. 

With that in mind, how well does PayPal convert customers?

Conversion Rates

74% of customers are more likely to purchase from an unknown business if they offer PayPal at checkout [4]. Likely leading to the 33% increase in checkout conversion when they use PayPal to make payments.

And it led to a 13% increase in unplanned purchases.

The percentage for unplanned purchases leaped to 38% when ordering from the food delivery category.

These checkout conversion rates for PayPal users fluctuate when it comes to different industries:

Wow.

That must mean PayPal has grown a lot over the years.

Growth Statistics for PayPal

Here are some indicators of PayPal’s growth:

• 30% increase in usage with Venmo Debit Card and Pay.
  • PayPal owns Venmo.
• They have received more than $5 billion in funding over 6 rounds.
  • Their latest round of funding was in June 2023.

There aren’t too many statistics for this area. Considering we’ve discussed their growth in various categories.

Let’s move on to how secure PayPal is.

Security Statistics for PayPal

Is PayPal secure enough for your business? Let’s see with these statistics [5]:

• They had a 0.08% Transaction Loss Rate in 2023.
  • That’s less than the 0.09% loss rate in 2021 and 2022.
• 9% year-over-year increase in passwordless checkouts.
• UpGuard gave PayPal an “A” rating (820/950) as of 2024 [6].
  • 43% of UpGuard’s rating comes from website security, which means that PayPal at least has good website security.
  • For comparison, Stripe has an 863/950 rating, which suggests it could be more secure in some areas.
• PayPal has a 0.17% revenue fraud rate.
  • That’s far below the 1.86% industry average.
• Order Not Delivered and Item Not Received categories make up for most disputes on PayPal.

Some statistics didn’t fit in earlier sections. Here they are.

Other PayPal Statistics

And here are statistics that didn’t fit into the above categories:

• PayPal has $12.2 billion in debt as of June 30th, 2024.
• They have over 27,200 employees across 27 countries and 144 nationalities as of 2023.
  • They also have a 21% total turnover rate.
  • 10,250 of these employees are in the US.
• There are 3 million Venmo Business profiles.
• 30% of Venmo users are 30 – 39 years old.
• 100% of their global energy used in data centers is from renewable energy sourcess
  • Renewables make up 89% of their total energy.
• Some of PayPal’s subsidiaries are Braintree, Zettle, Honey, Venmo, and Xoom.
• The Google Play Store's PayPal app had over 100 million downloads.
• EBay, PayPal’s parent company, had $2.556 billion in revenue.
  • A 1.83% year-over-year increase.

Now you have the data.

Should you use PayPal as your payment gateway?

Is PayPal Worth Using as a Business?

PayPal is a helpful tool for businesses. It provides easy payment options, helping to grow your customer base. Key factors to consider are transaction fees, chargebacks, and your business needs.

Let’s get the pros and cons of using PayPal for online businesses out of the way.

Pros:

• Popular payment method, increasing customer reach.
• Simple setup and user-friendly interface.
• Offers dispute and claim processes to protect sellers.
• Reimburses sellers for unauthorized or undelivered items.
• Includes invoicing tools, credit card readers, and lending options.
• Supports 25 currencies and 200 countries.

And here are the cons:

• Transaction and currency conversion fees can erode profits.
• Unexpected holds on funds can disrupt cash flow.
• Difficulty resolving issues with customer support.
• Overactive fraud detection can lead to frozen funds.
• Not ideal for streamers or businesses with high chargeback rates.

As someone who has used PayPal for business, do I recommend it?

Yeah.

Their customer service is a living nightmare. For instance, they don’t explain why something happened to my account. I’ve had my funds frozen when I needed them most, which ruins my trust in them. However, they are the most widely used payment processor.

I do like that PayPal has an internal dispute system that gives customers a barrier to cross before initiating a chargeback.

Chargebacks have cost businesses $30 billion per year and can result in losing the ability to process certain cards.

You should familiarize yourself with chargebacks and how to prevent them. Trust me. Doing this could save you thousands (or more) per year.

Anyway.

Stripe is the best alternative that I’d recommend over PayPal.

They don’t have an independent dispute system for chargebacks, but they’re cheaper fee-wise. I’ve also had a more pleasant experience and received more information regarding my account when talking to them.

You’ve heard the pros and cons. You know the alternatives. Now, let’s uncover PayPal’s true identity.

Summary: It’s a popular payment tool, easy for customers, but high fees and poor support. Consider alternatives like Stripe.

What is PayPal?

PayPal is an online payment system that allows individuals and businesses to send and receive money. It acts as a digital wallet, storing financial information securely. Buyers can link their bank account or credit card to a PayPal account, making it easy to purchase online without sharing financial details.

That’s about it for this piece.

Wrapping Up

PayPal has its faults (as do all payment gateways). But it holds the largest piece of the payment gateway market share. It’s also a trustworthy brand that attracts new customers. Review payment processors and pick a winner.

Once you have one, I highly recommend taking steps to prevent chargebacks. These reversals can have huge consequences for your business. One way to prevent them is by using chargeback alerts.

And we make setting up and managing alerts simple. See how we’ve helped merchants.

Sources

• [1] Q2 2024 Earnings Presentation. PayPal Investors. 7/30/2024 (PDF)
• [2] Global PayPal Adoption. Statista. 2024 (Paywalled)
• [3] PayPal Users in the US by Gender. Statista. 2024 (Paywalled)
• [4] How PayPal Helps Growth. PayPal. 2024
• [5] Global Impacts Report. PayPal. 2023 (PDF)
• [6] Security Report for PayPal. UpGuard. 8/8/2024