PayPal wants to be at the center of your “financial vibes,” Chief Executive Dan Schulman said to PayPal stockholders on Wednesday.
To do so, Schulman continued, PayPal is reinventing itself, alongside the quickly evolving industry.
No question, the world of financial services is being redefined by mobile and the digitization of money. I think there’s going to be more change in the financial services industry in the next five years than we have seen in the last 30. Mobile is fundamentally blurring the distinction between the online and offline worlds and putting all of the power of a bank branch in the palm of our consumers. And this is opening up a huge opportunity not just for merchants and consumers, but for PayPal as well. We want to be at the center of their financial vibes by democratizing money.
The customer is at the center of PayPal’s strategy toward becoming the largest open digital payments platform, he said. The company currently has 184 million customer accounts (compared to 179 million at the end of 2015), as well as 14 million merchant accounts, Schulman added. Partnerships with Facebook, and several mobile careers will also help scale the company’s customer base throughout this year.
“Since we have spun off from eBay, we have either met or exceeded each of the areas of guidance that we have been given,” he said. “Whether it be for all of last year or the first quarter of this years.”
In 1Q, PayPal Holdings Inc. reported total payments volume of $81 billion for the quarter, up 29% from a year ago, with its newer services – Venmo and Xoom – growing exponentially.