Number of Payment Transactions Through PayPal, by Year

The below graph represents the number of payment transactions completed through PayPal, from fiscal 2012 to the recently completed year. In 2019, approximately 12,361 million (12.4 billion) payment transactions were completed on either PayPal's own payment platform or enabled by PayPal via a partner payment solution.

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The above graph represents the number of payment transactions through PayPal, from fiscal 2012 to the recently completed year. In 2019, approximately 12,361 million (12.4 billion) payment transactions were completed on either PayPal’s own payment platform or enabled by PayPal via a partner payment solution. That’s an appreciable 25.2% year-over-year increase from 2018.

PayPal Payment Transactions: Additional Information

RegionWorldwide
SourcePayPal Annual Reports
Graph ID334
NotePayPal fiscal year starts from January 1st

The number of PayPal payment transactions in 2019 are done by 305 million PayPal’s active accounts, across more than 200 markets.

Interestingly, the number of payment transactions completed through PayPal increased significantly from 2,663 million in 2012 to 9,871 million in 2018.

PayPal defines the number of payment transactions as the total number of payments, net of payment reversals, successfully completed on its own payments platform or enabled by PayPal via a partner payment solution. This doesn’t include the gateway-exclusive transactions.

About PayPal

Founded in December 1998 as Confinity Inc., by Max LevchinPeter ThielLuke Nosek, and Ken Howery, PayPal Holding Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) was funded by John Malloy from BlurRun ventures.

However, it was March 2000, when Confinity merged with X.com, an online banking company founded by Elon Musk in November 1999. The visionary Musk was quick to visualise the future potential of the money transfer business Confinity was developing. In contrast to that, Bill Harris, the then-president and CEO of X.com, didn’t find much merit in Musk’s thoughts. Soon, Harris decided to part ways was Musk was determined to stay focused on Confinity money transfer service. He was so committed that he terminated the company’s all other Internet banking operations in order to remain focused on the money transfer business. 

All these shifts created an impact on Elon Musk’s position in the company he was replaced by Peter Thiel as CEO of X.com. In the following year, the X.com was renamed as PayPal.

The astounding growth of PayPal convinced executives to launch the IPO of PayPal in 2002. After the celebrated acquisition by eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) in July 2020 which valued PayPal $1.5 billion – 7% above the IPO price – it was clear that PayPal is en route to become a global leader in money transfer business.

After thirteen years of being under the umbrella of eBay, PayPal once again became an independent publicly traded company.


The above graph is a part of Dazeinfo GraphFarm – the most trusted source of hundreds of thousands of market graphs. Our team of researchers mines millions of data points every month to bring the most updated and validated set of data points representing the comprehensive view in a graphical format. From mobile to e-commerce, from Retail to healthcare, from startups to SMEs we have carefully designed thousands of graphs for those who value and understand the importance of data visualisation.

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