PayPal CEO Dan Schulman revealed during the company’s second-quarter earnings call this week that plans to launch its new consumer digital wallet app have nearly come to fruition. Over the next several quarters, the payments giant plans to unveil new financial services alongside an acceptance of crypto and ramped up shopping tools.
According to Wednesday’s call, the CEO revealed the app would include features like high-yield savings, early access to direct deposit funds, and interestingly enough, messaging functionality, giving consumers the ability to chat directly within the app’s user interface.
The idea of an all-in-one platform had been previously introduced by PayPal in former quarters as a digital wallet that could support everything from direct deposits, paying bills, BNPL functionalities and a crypto hub/support system.
However, the messaging application is a new component. PayPal’s Venmo has a similar offering — allowing for requests alongside a social feed where friends and family can see who paid who for what (minus the actual amount). Users can comment, like and even leave gifs under these transactions; it will be interesting to see if PayPal’s model is similar or more advanced.
“We think that’s going to drive a lot of engagement on the platform,” said Schulman during the call. “You don’t have to leave the platform to message back and forth.”
According to Schulman, the last time he counted, there were nearly 25 new capabilities that will be integrated into the super app including that messaging. Rewards, shopping, crowdsourcing among others made the cut which will require PayPal to undergo a hefty reconstruction of its user interface.
Based on PayPal’s Q2 earnings, the company has promising capital to tinker with.
The money to build a “super app” is definitely there for the payment juggernaut. The company’s earnings per share came in at $1.15 while the $6.24 billion of revenues were just shy of the $6.27 billion expected.
That’s 19% growth year over year.
Venmo, on the other hand, shot up 58% as measured in payment volumes to $58 billion thanks to a nudge from crypto. Close to six million new Venmo accounts found themselves on the app compared to the end of last year. Overall the brand is handling 76 million users transferring funds.
PayPal’s total payment volume from merchant customers also jumped 40% to $311 billion, over analysts original projection of $295.2 billion. Unfortunately, the company’s stock slipped due to a lowered outlook for Q3 as eBay makes its own plays in the managed payment service’s space.
But PayPal didn’t seem too shaken. Schulman noted during the earnings call that, “eBay merchants and consumers want and desire to use PayPal.” The company said that because more merchants accept QR codes, three casual sellers are signing up to offer PayPal’s QR codes every minute boosting its outside usage even further.
With money in the bank PayPal hinted at furthering its crypto capabilities on top of the cyprto purchase limit the company boosted from $20,000 to $100,000 earlier this month. That feature is available for all eligible PayPal customer in the U.S. with no annual purchase limit.
In March, it also announced the launch of “Checkout with Crypto”, a new feature that allows consumers to check out at millions of online businesses using cryptocurrency. The service supports Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash — but only one type of cryptocurrency can be used for each purchase.
There has yet to be any word on what particular parts of the super app will enhance PayPal’s cryptocurrency footprint.