| It might be interesting to split out Paypal the company from Paypal the product. Here's some armchair quarterbacking: Paypal the company (PayPal Holdings, Inc., NYSE: PYPL) has done well in recent years, where I think they've executed well on their inorganic growth strategy, where they've acquired 19 companies in the last 10 years, probably valued north of $10B. Venmo, Xoom, iZettle, and others are strong businesses in their own right, and Paypal hasn't done much to mess with them. It would be interesting to see the growth of their primary "Paypal" product. From their 2017 Annual Report[1]: > PayPal continues to drive the majority of our total P2P volumes, enabling both domestic and international P2P transfers across our Payments Platform. Our Venmo app in the U.S. is a leading mobile application used to move money between friends and family. Xoom is an international money transfer service that enables our customers to send money to, pay bills for and send prepaid mobile phone reloads for family and friends around the world in a secure, fast and cost-effective way, using their mobile device or personal computers. They don't offer detailed financials, but it may well be that "PayPal continues to drive the majority of our total P2P volumes" because it started out so large. This is the "first-mover advantage" mentioned elsewhere in this comment chain. I'm surprised as a consumer that Paypal hasn't done more to leverage the strength of their component brands (e.g., Venmo) with the strength of their network. [1] https://investor.paypal-corp.com/node/8556/html |