This story was delivered to BI Intelligence " Payments Briefing " subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here . PayPal posted strong results across segments in Q3 2016, allowing the firm to increase its growth targets for the year without changing its margins — a good sign for the rest of the year. PayPal posted strong growth in two key metrics. The firm’s total payment volume (TPV) rose 28% year-over-year (YoY) to $87 billion in Q3 2016. That was likely driven partly by an increase in customers, which grew by 19 million YoY to 192 million during the quarter. But even as PayPal adds customers, those clients are getting more engaged — average interactions per customer rose to 30, from 27 in the previous year, during Q3. Increased engagement likely means that PayPal’s focus on high-growth areas, like mobile payments and P2P functionality, is helping to drive customers to the service. Continuing to find ways to grow engagement will likely shape PayPal’s development moving forward. The company is pushing hard into other high-growth areas in order to better become “an everyday essential financial service” for people worldwide. Two such initiatives highlighted in the call stood out: Aggressive pursuit of Chinese and cross-border e-commerce: PayPal is expanding its partnership with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba so that Paypal will become a single-click buy button option on AliExpress, one of Alibaba’s largest marketplaces. PayPal customers are already interested in Chinese e-commerce — 40 million of the firm’s customers have made a purchase to China — so this could help them better channel that interest into purchasing. But it also could allow the firm to get a share of China’s fast-growing e-commerce market, and, if successful, could pave the way for more cross-border partnerships in the future. Mobile in-store payments: The […]
