PayPal is a global financial and technology company operating in more than 200 markets worldwide. The company enables global commerce, allowing customers to transact in 100 currencies, withdraw funds to their banks in 57 currencies, and hold balances in their account in 26 currencies.
Data powers PayPal from mitigating risks and accelerating innovations to delivering customer expectations.
PayPal believes delivering a great CX lies in taming the data, which answers their central question: How do you balance the competing demands between secure transaction and a frictionless customers experience?
Often businesses does not know which to prioritize, safety or speed to promote a seamless customer experience? For an example, when a customer shops online and fill up their cart before checking out, a single click is much more simpler, convenient, and appealing then searching for credit card and typing series of numbers. How long are customers willing to wait for the system to run identity verification checks before the option loses its luster? Between those 2 factors, safety always beats convenience according to PayPal Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Sri Shivananda.
‘’We are in the business of trust, we will always bias towards making sure that safety and security’s never compromised. If there’s a bit of speed loss, you can regain the speed. If there’s a bit of trust loss, you cannot regain that trust back’’
PayPal Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Sri Shivananda.
PayPal knows that finding a balance between both speed and security is key in delivering a great customer experience, and they are doing that in greater length by having a deep understanding of the individuals who uses their platform. In a typical day, PayPal processes approximately 27 million transactions a day, collecting vast amount of data about its customers spending behavior, location, patterns, and more. The data collected is then used to strike off a balance between speed and security in which customers identity are easily verified so that they do not need to identify themselves explicitly every time they transact, assuring users security while shaving off valuable seconds off of purchase time the data fill in the loop between speed and safety, where in two seconds transaction time, PayPal are able to conduct hundreds of ever thousands of risk checks.
There was a time when, on every single checkout, users were required to sign in again and again. PayPal on their part, has been working on a feature called OneTouch for couple of years now. OneTouch allows authenticated users to use PayPal platform without the need to sign in.
PayPal development and investment in improving the customer experience front is beginning to bear fruit. The company ended 2019 with a strong quarter 4 performance. Managing to surpass analysts estimations in terms of revenue, active usership, and total payments volume processed.
Strategic investments such as the $4 billion acquisition of shopping rewards platform Honey Science Corporation enables PayPal to leverage their complementary capabilities and drive customers engagement at an early phase in the commerce journey. In addition, the acquisition of 70% of stakes in GoPay has enable PayPal to be the first foreign ePayments firm able to operate in China, and played a crucial part in its cross border payments partnership with UnionPay.
Numbers for the 4th quarter of 2019 was up compared to the same quarter from a year before. Revenue came in at $4.96 billion up from $4.22 billion while total payments volume was up 22 percent to $199 billion. In total, PayPal said it processed a roughly estimation of 3.5 billion payment transaction in 2019. For the full year, the company posted a revenue of $17.77 billion and earnings per share of $3.10.
On the customers front, PayPal added 9.3 million active users on its platform in Q4, making it a total of 305 million users in its base. Engagement among users were up by 10%. Moving forward, the company expects to add approximately 35 million new active users in 2020.
A report published by KPMG at the end of 2019, placed PayPal as one of the Top 10 Leading Customer Experience Brands in markets like Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, and Singapore.
