PayPal Stock Is Down 20%. Is It Finally a Buy?
PayPal once owned the digital and peer-to-peer payments field but now faces a crush of well-financed rivals.Profits have been uneven as active members steadily fall.Yet the active members that remain are using the platform more often raising total payment volumes.PayPal stock is having a rough 2023, as competition in the digital payments industry intensifies. Where it used to have the field to itself against traditional credit card and debit card payments, consumers now have a cornucopia of digital and peer-to-peer payment options.It’s not getting any easier for PayPal to make a profit. Although operating margins are improving, gross and net margins sit well-below the payments stock’s five-year average. Competition makes it more difficult.Having once been part of eBay, that company spun PayPal off into a standalone company and had exclusivity as the auction site’s preferred payment processor. However, that changed in 2018 when eBay chose Netherlands-based fintech Ayden as its preferr