- Around the world, more and more people are using their smartphones to make purchases, receive payments and manage their accounts.
- This new technology is giving more and more people access to the global market and engage with financial institutions with greater speed and convenience than ever before.
- PayPal is innovating to revolutionize mobile shopping with solutions such as our One Touch™ technology, which enables consumers to check out with a simple touch.

Since PayPal launched its first mobile product in April 2006, we have seen more than $175 billion in mobile payment volume.
Mobile Technology Driving Financial Inclusion
- Mobile is revolutionizing how people engage with their financial services. Smartphones provide people with a convenient, secure and affordable way to move and manage their money. Consumers and merchants are showing that they want to use mobile devices to access and manage traditional financial mechanisms such as bank accounts and credit cards, as well as new financial tools like digital wallets, wealth management tools and online credit.
- Mobile technologies can also serve as a tool for financial inclusion by harnessing the power of mobility to bring the financial institutions to the consumer. Access to institutions and funds, as well as clarity of account information, can disproportionately impact poorer individuals. Mobile technologies like digital wallets, person-to-person (P2P) payments and account management can help improve financial health.
PayPal Leading Mobile Innovation
- Since 1998, PayPal has been at the forefront of innovation in the mobile payments industry. Our products and technologies have evolved to match the growing trend towards mobile payments on a platform that supports both consumers and merchants. Mobile shopping demands a faster, simpler and secure payment method, which PayPal offers.
- In 2015, out of the 4.9 billion payment transactions processed through PayPal, 1.4 billion were made on a mobile device, totaling $66 billion in mobile payment volume. [link]
- Since PayPal launched its first mobile product in April 2006, we have seen more than $175 billion in mobile payment volume (which has since exceeded $200 billion). [link]
- In 2010, mobile represented 1% of PayPal’s overall TPV. In 2016, it's almost 30%. [link]
- In Q3 of 2016, $4.9 billion in payments were made on Venmo, up 131% year over year. [link]
PayPal Helping Consumers, Small Merchants Harness the Benefits of Mobile
- PayPal’s mobile app (localized in 26 markets, supporting 17 languages) and mobile-optimized website gives consumers the choice to access the power of their online accounts on their mobile devices. We also help merchants, particularly small merchants, optimize their checkout pages for mobile access.
- PayPal is helping to revolutionize mobile shopping with our One Touch™ technology, which is speeding up our check-out experience for consumers with a simple touch when a customer wants to check out. No pop-up windows, no redirecting to another site, no typing and retyping of your username and password or 16-digit credit card number every time you try to check out.
- On Thanksgiving and Black Friday (in the U.S.), purchases made on mobile devices accounted for approximately one-third of PayPal’s global TPV and Cyber Monday saw double digit growth in mobile payment volume. [link]
- Javelin Research found PayPal to be amongst the top 5 most trusted brands in mobile (2015). Brunswick Insights survey found PayPal is the most trusted Internet company amongst European consumersi.
- Unbanked consumers in the U.S. are twice as likely to report having used the PayPal mobile app than Google Wallet and three times more likely than Apple Pay. [link]
Mobile Payments Growing Globally
- According to a Gallup poll in June 2016, 24% of Americans report using cash in all or most of their transactions, down from 36% who said they were doing this in 2011. [link]
- Based on a consumer survey of 23,200 people, 47% of global online shoppers made a purchase via smartphone in the past year. [link] In the U.S., Javelin Research found 1 in 4 consumers report having used a mobile wallet in the last 30 days (equates to 40 million Americans) up from 12% in 2014. [link]
- According to a 2016 survey by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, 53% of smartphone owners with a bank account had used mobile banking in the past year, and 40% of the unbanked and 70% of the underbanked, respectively, had a smartphone. [link]
- In China, the central bank handled USD 1.6 trillion worth of mobile transactions in 2013. [link] The value of global mobile commerce is forecasted to exceed $500 billion by 2017, half of which comes from Asia.
- Office of the Comptroller of the Currency stated in a recent white paper that 85 million millennials are entering into the financial marketplace in the U.S. Responding to those market forces are thousands of technology-driven nonbank companies offering a new approach to products and services. [link]
People Who Have Never Made a Mobile Payment Increasingly Rare
- According to a Research and Markets report, the Global Mobile Payments market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 36.26% from 2016-2020 due to increasing penetration of mobile payments in various sectors, increase in analytics services, and availability of affordable mobile payments solutions and services. [link]
- Javelin Research released a study predicting mobile retail payments to reach $410 billion in 2020. [link]
- According to AT Kearney’s European Payments Strategy Report, one-third of the world’s roughly 280 billion annual non-cash payments occur in Europe. [link] Visa’s 2016 Digital Payments Study found that the number of Europeans regularly using a mobile device for payments has tripled since 2015 (54% vs. 18%) and those that have never used a mobile device to make a payment has decreased from 38% a year ago to just 12%. [link]
- 23% of millennials in North America make a mobile payment at a merchant location weekly compared to an average of 18% for all other age groups. [link]
i. Brunswick Insights, Europe & the Internet: It’s Complicated (September 2015). Polling data based on a survey conducted with 3,000 people across Europe’s three largest markets (UK, France, Germany) online.
We urge policymakers to collaborate with industry to ensure regulation of mobile technology meets the goals of consumer protection and healthy industry innovation. Payments policy should be modernized to reflect the move towards mobile and recognize consumer behavior. We also urge policymakers to consider the connection between broadband and mobile broadband deployment and its impact on access to mobile for members of underbanked communities.