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PayPal statistics

435 million people have an active PayPal account

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By

Susannah Binsted

Updated

Fact checked

PayPal is almost synonymous with online transactions. It has the largest market share (43%) in the payment processing industry and has had an incredible growth trajectory over the last decade. But just how quickly has PayPal grown? Read on to find out.

Quick summary

  • 435 million people had an active PayPal account in 2022, up more than 204% compared to 2013.
  • PayPal had the biggest year-on-year growth of active users during the first year of the pandemic, growing 24% from 2019.
  • The average PayPal user makes 51 transactions per year. This is up from 24 in 2014.
  • The total payment value via PayPal has increased by 480% from 2014 to 2022.
  • PayPal is one of the most popular payment methods for online transactions in the United States, accounting for 22% of online transactions.
  • PayPal is available in more than 200 countries and regions and supports 25 currencies.

PayPal adoption statistics

  • 435 million people had an active PayPal account in 2022, up more than 204% compared to 2013 when 143 million people used the service.
  • PayPal had the biggest year-on-year growth of active users (from 2010–2021) during the first year of the pandemic, growing 24% from 2019.
  • In 2019, the number of active customer accounts grew by 5% while merchant accounts grew by 14%.
  • In the 5 years from 2018–2022, merchant accounts grew at a faster rate than customer accounts. In 2018, there were 267 million active customer accounts. This grew by 63% to 435 million active users in 2022. Merchant accounts increased by 67% from 21 million in 2018 to 35 million in 2022.
  • PayPal is available to consumers and merchants in more than 200 countries and regions in Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe. Furthermore, it handles payments in 25 currencies.
  • Kenya has the highest search interest for PayPal according to Google Trends, followed by Germany, Jamaica and Ethiopia.

PayPal transaction statistics

  • The number of PayPal transactions has increased by 155% from 2018 to 2022. US$9.9 billion worth of transactions occurred in 2018, and in 2022, there was US$22.3 billion worth of transactions.
  • For the past 3 years, from 2019–2022, PayPal transactions increased 20.58% year on year.
  • The total payment value via PayPal has increased by 480% from 2014 to 2022. In 2022, $1,363 billion was transacted on the network, up from $235 billion in 2014.
  • The pandemic years (2020 and 2021) saw huge year-on-year growth in the volume transacted on the network. Total payment value grew 31% in 2020 and 33% in 2021.
  • The average PayPal user makes 51 transactions per year. This is up from 24 in 2014.

PayPal competitors:

  • PayPal has a market share of 42% in the payment processing industry – the most of any brand.
  • Stripe has the second largest market share at 19.45%, followed by Shopify (12.47%) and Amazon Pay (4.76%).
  1. PayPal
  2. Datanyze

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