To The Moon

The history of $PayPal(PYPL)$ is so colourful that its akin to a must-read novel. It was established in 1998 as Confinity. In 2002, PayPal went public via an IPO. By end 2002, It became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay, valued at $1.5 Billion. In 2015 —13 years later, Paypal became independent again when eBay spun it off to its shareholders. In 2022, Fortune 500 ranked Paypal as #143 largest US corporates by Revenue. Did you know? Musk, was the founder of X.com. Eventually his online bank (X.com) merged with Confinity and become Paypal. He ascended the throne and became CEO, PayPal. By the summer of 2000, he wore out his welcome with colleagues due to disputes about the direction of the company following the merger. In retaliation, the Paypal mafia was formed that managed to ouster Musk through proper channels by voting him out. 8 years on after being orphaned by eBay, Paypal has soared even higher. It has emerged to become a top contender vying for Payment processing dominance. In the competitive landscape of the e-commerce payment processing industry, there are in essence 3 dominant players: Paypal. $Adyen N.V.(ADYEY)$ — from The Netherlands, listed on the Euronext Amsterdam. Stripe — from Ireland & a privately held company. In 2022 alone, PayPal’s revenue came to a tidy sum of $27.5 Billion.; not bad for a company that embraced a risky low-price strategy. One of its strategies was cutting prices on its Braintree service, which is a white-label service that allows merchants to accept various payment methods. It proved to be a success because revenue jumped from $6.2 Billion (2021) to $8.4 Billion (2022); constituting approx. 30% of PayPal’s total net revenue. Braintree is growing faster (+40% in 2022) than other parts of PayPal and unbranded transactions, that are mostly driven by Braintree. Conversely, PayPal’s branded business, when consumers click on the yellow PayPal button, grew a negligible +5% in 2022. Continuous challenges facing PayPal: (1) Slowdown in e-commerce spending post-pandemic. (2) Increasing competition on branded checkout from alternatives eg. Apple Pay. Putting it mildly, Apple Pay has grown to become a formidable competitor. Its users’ base grew from 507 Million to > 700 Million in 2022, in 2 short years. In April, PayPal added Apple Pay as a payment option for its checkout product for small-to-medium sized businesses, bowing to merchants’ demand. (3) Antitrust lawsuit filed against PayPal for allegedly preventing merchants from offering discounts to customers who use cheaper payment options. Ultimate Dash: The importance of platform businesses like Shopify, eBay and Etsy, cannot be over emphasized. These marketplaces are able to help smaller businesses sell to their own customers. As a result, they have become key battlegrounds for the 3 amigos (PayPal, Adyen and Stripe), as they drive huge volumes of transactions. In September 2023, Paypal has a new CEO, Alex Chriss who hails from Intuit where he was based for 19 years. Intuit Inc. provides [1] financial management and [2] compliance products & services for: Consumers. Small businesses. Self-employed. Accounting professionals. Will a pedigree background, will Alex be able to seal Paypal as the undisputed #1 payment platform? Cannot wait to witness. Do you think Paypal will become the undisputed #1 payment platform? Do you think the new blood will be the key to Paypal becoming #1? Please give a “LIKe”, “Share” and “Re-post” ok. Thanks. Rating is very important (to me). Do consider “Follow me” and get firsthand read of my daily new post/s ok. Thanks. @Daily_Discussion @TigerPM @TigerStars @Tiger_SG @TigerEvents