PayPal Revenue by Quarter: FY Q1 2014 – Q2 2020

The below graph represents the quarterly distribution of PayPal's global revenue, starting from fiscal Q1 2014 to Q2 2020. The company reported its highest-ever quarterly revenue of $5,261 million in Q2 2020, with an appreciable 22.2% YoY growth. A majority of that came from the transaction fees charged to merchants and consumers on a transaction basis.

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The above graph represents PayPal global revenue by quarter, starting from fiscal Q1 2014 to Q2 2020. The company reported its highest-ever quarterly revenue of $5,261 million in Q2 2020, with an appreciable 22.2% YoY growth.

Growth in PayPal Quarterly Revenue: History

RegionWorldwide
SourcePayPal SEC Filings
Graph ID788
NotePayPal fiscal year starts from January 1st

In 2014, PayPal achieved a $2 billion quarterly global revenue milestone for the first time. PayPal generated $2.19 billion in revenue with a 19.44% YoY growth in Q4 FY’14.

The company achieved another milestone in 2017 with an all-time high YoY growth. In Q4 2017, PayPal quarterly revenue reached $3.7 billion ($3,744 million) recording 25.6% YoY growth.

However, since fiscal Q1 2018, the company has been witnessing a slowdown in the YoY growth rate, even though the quarterly global revenue continues to increase. One of the reasons behind this slow down can the increasing competition in the digital payment industry. In a bid to capture the market, new competitors are offering lower transaction charges and better conversion rates than Paypal in cross-border transactions. This competition has directly resulted in the slow YoY growth in PayPal quarterly revenue.

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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