PayPal Holdings Inc. reemerged as a publicly traded company on Monday after a 13 years gap – years well spend with eBay Inc after the marketplace giant acquired it in 2002. The NASDAQ listing day was obviously a big day for the company and saw huge celebrations across the global Paypal locations including their offices in Bangalore and Chennai, India.
With more than $6 billion in cash on hand, $235 billion in total payment volume, $46 billion in mobile payment volume, $8 billion in 2014 revenue, and a five-year operating agreement with eBay, PayPal is in a better position now to standalone and brace up for more pie of the ‘new money’ and the digital markets beyond the eBay empire. In terms of customers, it serves more than 169 million active customer accounts in 203 markets around the world.
The new independent public company will trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol “PYPL.” , the same ticker symbol it traded before its eBay acquisition.
“As the world’s open, digital payments platform and most trusted and popular digital wallet, we are excited to celebrate our listing day and embark on our next chapter,” said Dan Schulman, President and Chief Executive Officer of PayPal. “Mobile technology is transforming payments, making it easier, safer and more affordable for people to move and manage their money than ever before. As an independent company, we see a tremendous opportunity for PayPal to expand our role as a champion for consumers and partner to merchants, and to help shape the industry as money becomes digital at an increasingly rapid pace.”
At the Bangalore celebrations, I had an opportunity to interact with Dhruv Sawhney, GM Technology, Bangalore who shared few insights on the PayPal’s activity in India. Sounding optimistic and confident of the road ahead, Dhruv mentioned about 10% of PayPal’s global workforce are spread in their two Indian locations at Bangalore and Chennai and they look at vibrant, diversified local talent pool from different streams. Though the Digital India is the latest flavour, Dhruv mentioned at PayPal there already exists an Business Startup Challenge to actively promote and nurture new digital ideas.
I couldn’t but remember the Queen’s lyrics that fits the PayPal’s reemergence on its own legs now. Spread your little wings and fly away, Fly away, far away; Pull yourself together; ‘Cos you know you should do better; That’s because you’re a free man
Some fact sheets about Paypal’s recent performance:
Q2 2015 Fast Facts- Active Customer Accounts: 169 million
- Revenue: $2.3 billion, up 19% year over year (FXN)
- Total Payment Volume: $66B, up 28% (FXN) (accelerating from Q1).
- Merchant Services Payment Volume: $51 billion, up 36% year over year (FXN)
- Mobile Payment Volume: In Q2 mobile transactions represented 30% of our total transactions. (We are now live with 67 of the top 100 mobile merchants).
- Venmo processed $1.6 billion transaction volume, up 247% year over year.
- We expect to generate Free Cash Flow of $1.6 – $1.8 billion for 2015.
- Total Payment Volume: $235 billion, up 26% year over year
- Mobile Payment Volume: $46 billion in mobile payment volume up 68% year over year.
- In 2014, 20% of PayPal’s net Total Payment Volume was from mobile payments.
- PayPal processed 4 billion payments in 2014.
- PayPal processed 1 billion mobile payments in 2014.
