Can PayPal World Drive Deeper Customer Engagement?
PayPal Holdings PYPL is using PayPal World to strengthen connectivity across its consumer ecosystem and potentially drive greater transaction activity. The initiative facilitated roughly $200 million in total payment volume (TPV) between PayPal and Venmo in the second quarter, providing an early sign that the platform is moving beyond development toward actual consumer usage.
The initiative comes as PayPal focuses on increasing engagement among its existing customers. In the second quarter, payment transactions increased 8% year over year, while transactions per active account, excluding payment service provider activity, rose 7%. In comparison, monthly active accounts increased just 1%. This divergence highlights why increasing transaction frequency and broadening use cases across PayPal’s ecosystem are becoming more important to its growth strategy.
Venmo provides a useful example of how deeper engagement can improve monetization. Venmo TPV grew 14% year over year, while monthly active accounts for the Venmo Debit Card increased more than 50%. PayPal also said customers using both Venmo Debit and Pay with Venmo generated more than nine times the average revenue per account of peer-to-peer-only users.
PayPal World could build on this trend by making transactions across PayPal and Venmo more seamless. Greater connectivity may create additional payment occasions, reduce friction and encourage users to transact more frequently, potentially supporting higher TPV, stronger customer engagement and greater monetization over time. If adoption scales, the initiative could strengthen PayPal’s two-sided network by making its consumer platforms more useful to merchants.
How Are PayPal’s Competitors Faring?
Block, Inc. XYZ competes with PayPal through Cash App, Square and Afterpay. In the second quarter of 2026, Block generated $3.17 billion in gross profit, up 25% year over year. Cash App gross profit rose 31% to $1.97 billion, while Square gross profit increased 13% to $1.16 billion. Square GPV reached $72.8 billion, up 13%.
Fiserv, Inc. FISV competes through merchant payments, Clover and financial-services technology. In the second quarter of 2026, Fiserv reported $5.29 billion in GAAP revenues, down 4% year over year, while adjusted revenues fell 4% to $4.96 billion. Adjusted EPS declined 26% to $1.84.
PYPL’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates
Shares of PayPal have gained 24.5% over the past three months, outperforming the broader industry and the S&P 500 Index.
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From a valuation standpoint, PayPal shares are trading cheaply, as suggested by the Value Score of A. In terms of forward 12-month P/E, PYPL stock is trading at 9.31X, which is at a significant discount to the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry’s 17.60X.
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PayPal’s estimate revisions reflect a positive trend. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for full-year 2026 EPS has been revised upward to $5.38 over the past two months. The consensus estimate for the metric indicates a year-over-year increase of 1.3%.
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PayPal currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
