PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain_老虎社区_美港股上老虎

PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain

seekingalpha2021-03-15

Summary As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world. Also, ...

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Khay
·2021-03-16
Great news~ it would have been better if the stock can move up more....
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Kess
·2021-03-15
Good potential
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Rhythm88
·2021-03-15
One of the traditional payment gateway provider who continue to evolve to two on the growth like visa n master based on the number shore here. 👍🏻
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kino318
·2021-03-15
If you have time, please help to like this. Many thanks
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Blackk
·2021-03-15
Nice
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Blackk
·2021-03-15
Please comment and like
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1
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- JeryChan:
  done
  2021-03-15
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- Blackk:
  Thanks
  2021-03-15
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sw33tpotato
·2021-03-15
this is cool
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nakazatous
·2021-03-15
Like my comment
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1
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- JeryChan:
  done
  2021-03-15
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UNCLEUNCLE
·2021-03-15
Great thanks
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1
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lihodinho
·2021-03-15
Anticipating
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1
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Tongs
·2021-03-15
Good to know crypto is gaining more support
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1
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kohaku84
·2021-03-15
Defintely increase productivity
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1
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leoknight
·2021-03-15
like
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1
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JFK
·2021-03-15
Ok. Pls like and comment.
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5
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- Aaronykc:
  Please reply Thanks
  2021-03-15
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- Lty1098:
  Like n comment pls
  2021-03-15
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- nakazatous:
  Ok
  2021-03-15
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Wgmz
·2021-03-15
LIKE
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4
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obg
·2021-03-15
Like and comment pls
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6
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- Billie Lo:
  Reply my comment plz tq
  2021-03-15
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- Carolir:
  .
  2021-03-15
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- JFK回复Carolir:
  Ok
  2021-03-15
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查看更多 1 条评论
7859c582
·2021-03-15
Can u have a like and comment pls
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6
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- Billie Lo:
  Reply my comment Plz tq
  2021-03-15
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- JulianAlson:
  Okie replied lols i also need
  2021-03-15
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Kelvinyoon26
·2021-03-15
Buy
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3
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- jc0110:
  wait for it
  2021-03-15
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- Check7mate7:
  Agree
  2021-03-16
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Mm101
·2021-03-15
Yes
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4
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- Mm101:
  No
  2021-03-15
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ZEROHERO
·2021-03-15
Buy BTC to 100k
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4
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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">网页链接</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","isBrief":false,"type":0,"news_type":1,"symbol":"PYPL","symbol_name":"PayPal","start_time":0,"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","article_id":"1111036221","we_media_id":null,"thumbnails":[],"rights":null,"url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"sourceInfo":{"source_id":"seekingalpha","name":"Seeking Alpha"},"weMediaInfo":null,"summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","collect":0,"end_time":0,"defaultTopTitle":"seekingalpha.com","property":[],"viewcount":null,"language":"en","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"translate_title":"PayPal：用区块链实现下一代数字支付","themeId":null,"isJumpTheme":false,"ttsUrl":null,"symbols_score_info":{"PYPL":0.9},"content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","kind":null,"is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":false,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":1},"commentList":[{"id":325935517,"gmtCreate":1615856463839,"gmtModify":1703494012345,"author":{"id":"3575509965500620","authorId":"3575509965500620","name":"Khay","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7697911666e72aa44cf5e42a7288913f","vip":1,"crmLevel":6,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3575509965500620","idStr":"3575509965500620"},"htmlText":"Great news~ it would have been better if the stock can move up more....","listText":"Great news~ it would have been better if the stock can move up more....","text":"Great news~ it would have been better if the stock can move up more....","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/325935517","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322167655,"gmtCreate":1615784462377,"gmtModify":1703492907496,"author":{"id":"3574940130653589","authorId":"3574940130653589","name":"Kess","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/845998be69a2f9e60a4fdec19f22cc21","vip":1,"crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3574940130653589","idStr":"3574940130653589"},"htmlText":"Good potential","listText":"Good potential","text":"Good potential","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322167655","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322164637,"gmtCreate":1615784394929,"gmtModify":1703492905415,"author":{"id":"3565560262275157","authorId":"3565560262275157","name":"Rhythm88","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/80f5501da2fa10a6c684b9c19b6117a4","vip":1,"crmLevel":6,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3565560262275157","idStr":"3565560262275157"},"htmlText":"One of the traditional payment gateway provider who continue to evolve to two on the growth like&nbsp;visa n master based on the number shore here. 👍🏻","listText":"One of the traditional payment gateway provider who continue to evolve to two on the growth like&nbsp;visa n master based on the number shore here. 👍🏻","text":"One of the traditional payment gateway provider who continue to evolve to two on the growth like visa n master based on the number shore here. 👍🏻","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322164637","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322165177,"gmtCreate":1615784243099,"gmtModify":1703492903519,"author":{"id":"3578134255896974","authorId":"3578134255896974","name":"kino318","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e983f44b7853b7b8c10f1b3f6e19dc68","vip":1,"crmLevel":6,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3578134255896974","idStr":"3578134255896974"},"htmlText":"If you have time, please help to like this. Many thanks","listText":"If you have time, please help to like this. Many thanks","text":"If you have time, please help to like this. Many thanks","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322165177","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322163183,"gmtCreate":1615783781342,"gmtModify":1703492896271,"author":{"id":"3572770726668540","authorId":"3572770726668540","name":"Blackk","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/93d9bfa23cdea8af3308e34dedf35d9e","vip":1,"crmLevel":8,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3572770726668540","idStr":"3572770726668540"},"htmlText":"Nice&nbsp;","listText":"Nice&nbsp;","text":"Nice","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322163183","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322163933,"gmtCreate":1615783758722,"gmtModify":1703492895928,"author":{"id":"3572770726668540","authorId":"3572770726668540","name":"Blackk","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/93d9bfa23cdea8af3308e34dedf35d9e","vip":1,"crmLevel":8,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3572770726668540","idStr":"3572770726668540"},"htmlText":"Please comment and like","listText":"Please comment and like","text":"Please comment and like","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322163933","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3796253,"gmtCreate":1615784043343,"gmtModify":1635754358975,"authorId":3569941662599107,"author":{"id":3569941662599107,"idStr":"3569941662599107","authorId":3569941662599107,"name":"JeryChan","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9c16551a836b0a9cef0544668f2d9919","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322163933,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"done","text":"done","html":"done"},{"id":3796747,"gmtCreate":1615790098575,"gmtModify":1635754329385,"authorId":3572770726668540,"author":{"id":3572770726668540,"idStr":"3572770726668540","authorId":3572770726668540,"name":"Blackk","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/93d9bfa23cdea8af3308e34dedf35d9e","vip":1,"crmLevel":8,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322163933,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Thanks","text":"Thanks","html":"Thanks"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322160277,"gmtCreate":1615783663699,"gmtModify":1703492894376,"author":{"id":"3572666670669938","authorId":"3572666670669938","name":"sw33tpotato","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3572666670669938","idStr":"3572666670669938"},"htmlText":"this is cool","listText":"this is cool","text":"this is cool","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322160277","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322160306,"gmtCreate":1615783620205,"gmtModify":1703492893686,"author":{"id":"3570519374633708","authorId":"3570519374633708","name":"nakazatous","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9ac34656b654252df0f82999785e92ae","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3570519374633708","idStr":"3570519374633708"},"htmlText":"Like my comment","listText":"Like my comment","text":"Like my comment","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322160306","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3796254,"gmtCreate":1615784058417,"gmtModify":1635754358852,"authorId":3569941662599107,"author":{"id":3569941662599107,"idStr":"3569941662599107","authorId":3569941662599107,"name":"JeryChan","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9c16551a836b0a9cef0544668f2d9919","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322160306,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"done","text":"done","html":"done"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322181642,"gmtCreate":1615783086386,"gmtModify":1703492884528,"author":{"id":"3578454236921942","authorId":"3578454236921942","name":"UNCLEUNCLE","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/39d9ac757e81155e380be67c7f350841","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3578454236921942","idStr":"3578454236921942"},"htmlText":"Great thanks","listText":"Great thanks","text":"Great thanks","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322181642","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322114232,"gmtCreate":1615782606126,"gmtModify":1703492877969,"author":{"id":"3572873299266634","authorId":"3572873299266634","name":"lihodinho","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ce26285dde6f61cce538452d66c2a6a9","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3572873299266634","idStr":"3572873299266634"},"htmlText":"Anticipating&nbsp;","listText":"Anticipating&nbsp;","text":"Anticipating","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322114232","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322115749,"gmtCreate":1615782577181,"gmtModify":1703492877106,"author":{"id":"3555822052484377","authorId":"3555822052484377","name":"Tongs","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b0a38d6dcec089553bed2e9e999c283a","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3555822052484377","idStr":"3555822052484377"},"htmlText":"Good to know crypto is gaining more support&nbsp;","listText":"Good to know crypto is gaining more support&nbsp;","text":"Good to know crypto is gaining more support","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322115749","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322112124,"gmtCreate":1615782437668,"gmtModify":1703492874516,"author":{"id":"3571784946922966","authorId":"3571784946922966","name":"kohaku84","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ced1f1ad7dc4fefc13b10ec983b8fd7e","vip":1,"crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3571784946922966","idStr":"3571784946922966"},"htmlText":"Defintely increase productivity","listText":"Defintely increase productivity","text":"Defintely increase productivity","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322112124","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322116159,"gmtCreate":1615782384371,"gmtModify":1703492872444,"author":{"id":"3573082160831282","authorId":"3573082160831282","name":"leoknight","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3573082160831282","idStr":"3573082160831282"},"htmlText":"like","listText":"like","text":"like","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322116159","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322136010,"gmtCreate":1615781673530,"gmtModify":1703492856381,"author":{"id":"3567221235003553","authorId":"3567221235003553","name":"JFK","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d8cdaf8b81ae245f2f2ea5ff303a6722","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3567221235003553","idStr":"3567221235003553"},"htmlText":"Ok. Pls like and comment.&nbsp;","listText":"Ok. Pls like and comment.&nbsp;","text":"Ok. Pls like and comment.","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":5,"commentSize":3,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322136010","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3796030,"gmtCreate":1615781995627,"gmtModify":1635754373698,"authorId":3571535693267201,"author":{"id":3571535693267201,"idStr":"3571535693267201","authorId":3571535693267201,"name":"Aaronykc","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a6fb0a4f08d4e7b8733e7ebc2445aad5","vip":1,"crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322136010,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Please reply Thanks","text":"Please reply Thanks","html":"Please reply Thanks"},{"id":3796033,"gmtCreate":1615782024607,"gmtModify":1635754373329,"authorId":3573201360768736,"author":{"id":3573201360768736,"idStr":"3573201360768736","authorId":3573201360768736,"name":"Lty1098","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0123641e5b1e8993162711702dcb0f22","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322136010,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Like n comment pls","text":"Like n comment pls","html":"Like n comment pls"},{"id":3796205,"gmtCreate":1615783604342,"gmtModify":1635754362899,"authorId":3570519374633708,"author":{"id":3570519374633708,"idStr":"3570519374633708","authorId":3570519374633708,"name":"nakazatous","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9ac34656b654252df0f82999785e92ae","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322136010,"type":1,"supId":3796030,"prevId":0,"content":"Ok","text":"Ok","html":"Ok"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322131047,"gmtCreate":1615781405989,"gmtModify":1703492853433,"author":{"id":"3578414014416070","authorId":"3578414014416070","name":"Wgmz","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/550969253cbe7b184f246385991eb17e","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3578414014416070","idStr":"3578414014416070"},"htmlText":"LIKE","listText":"LIKE","text":"LIKE","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322131047","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322192040,"gmtCreate":1615780263180,"gmtModify":1703492843064,"author":{"id":"3574975152603668","authorId":"3574975152603668","name":"obg","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3574975152603668","idStr":"3574975152603668"},"htmlText":"Like and comment pls","listText":"Like and comment pls","text":"Like and comment pls","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":6,"commentSize":4,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322192040","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3795861,"gmtCreate":1615780358835,"gmtModify":1635754384981,"authorId":3569982147441048,"author":{"id":3569982147441048,"idStr":"3569982147441048","authorId":3569982147441048,"name":"Billie Lo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2de8913068819a9735f0bb22ec7a5e72","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322192040,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Reply my comment plz tq","text":"Reply my comment plz tq","html":"Reply my comment plz tq"},{"id":3795871,"gmtCreate":1615780412374,"gmtModify":1635754384255,"authorId":3576326025007657,"author":{"id":3576326025007657,"idStr":"3576326025007657","authorId":3576326025007657,"name":"Carolir","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7336f44d3eff2834f40e92f17d72ed7e","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322192040,"type":1,"supId":3795861,"prevId":0,"content":".","text":".","html":"."},{"id":3795988,"gmtCreate":1615781684344,"gmtModify":1635754377518,"authorId":3567221235003553,"author":{"id":3567221235003553,"idStr":"3567221235003553","authorId":3567221235003553,"name":"JFK","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d8cdaf8b81ae245f2f2ea5ff303a6722","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":3576326025007657,"repliedAuthor":{"id":3576326025007657,"idStr":"3576326025007657","authorId":3576326025007657,"name":"Carolir","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7336f44d3eff2834f40e92f17d72ed7e","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"objectId":322192040,"type":1,"supId":3795861,"prevId":3795871,"content":"Ok","text":"Ok","html":"Ok"},{"id":3796206,"gmtCreate":1615783611615,"gmtModify":1635754362774,"authorId":3570519374633708,"author":{"id":3570519374633708,"idStr":"3570519374633708","authorId":3570519374633708,"name":"nakazatous","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9ac34656b654252df0f82999785e92ae","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":3576326025007657,"repliedAuthor":{"id":3576326025007657,"idStr":"3576326025007657","authorId":3576326025007657,"name":"Carolir","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7336f44d3eff2834f40e92f17d72ed7e","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"objectId":322192040,"type":1,"supId":3795861,"prevId":3795871,"content":"Ok","text":"Ok","html":"Ok"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322196119,"gmtCreate":1615780146931,"gmtModify":1703492842201,"author":{"id":"3574340444890290","authorId":"3574340444890290","name":"7859c582","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3574340444890290","idStr":"3574340444890290"},"htmlText":"Can u have a like and comment pls","listText":"Can u have a like and comment pls","text":"Can u have a like and comment pls","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":6,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322196119","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3795866,"gmtCreate":1615780387461,"gmtModify":1635754384497,"authorId":3569982147441048,"author":{"id":3569982147441048,"idStr":"3569982147441048","authorId":3569982147441048,"name":"Billie Lo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2de8913068819a9735f0bb22ec7a5e72","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322196119,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Reply my comment Plz tq","text":"Reply my comment Plz tq","html":"Reply my comment Plz tq"},{"id":3796138,"gmtCreate":1615782901982,"gmtModify":1635754367208,"authorId":3575352038769618,"author":{"id":3575352038769618,"idStr":"3575352038769618","authorId":3575352038769618,"name":"JulianAlson","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a4f9fadbfd2a54fe54a080c1732d41f9","vip":1,"crmLevel":6,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322196119,"type":1,"supId":3795866,"prevId":0,"content":"Okie replied lols i also need ","text":"Okie replied lols i also need ","html":"Okie replied lols i also need "}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322191604,"gmtCreate":1615779930708,"gmtModify":1703492839262,"author":{"id":"3558581504257803","authorId":"3558581504257803","name":"Kelvinyoon26","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17c18f026fcaa77f437cb20f39e1b4ef","vip":1,"crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3558581504257803","idStr":"3558581504257803"},"htmlText":"Buy","listText":"Buy","text":"Buy","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322191604","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3796180,"gmtCreate":1615783424418,"gmtModify":1635754365241,"authorId":3576885233950935,"author":{"id":3576885233950935,"idStr":"3576885233950935","authorId":3576885233950935,"name":"jc0110","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e09e5e2e4ea456938e5df81fb0919107","vip":1,"crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322191604,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"wait for it","text":"wait for it","html":"wait for it"},{"id":3803836,"gmtCreate":1615857186401,"gmtModify":1635753939867,"authorId":3573551446689524,"author":{"id":3573551446689524,"idStr":"3573551446689524","authorId":3573551446689524,"name":"Check7mate7","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e9d871c2fd09c2324036896302dbd1a6","vip":1,"crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322191604,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Agree","text":"Agree","html":"Agree"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322193852,"gmtCreate":1615779858576,"gmtModify":1703492837362,"author":{"id":"3565081661382277","authorId":"3565081661382277","name":"Mm101","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/01758aa877d9e5a9767d24de3a4e2ff1","vip":1,"crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3565081661382277","idStr":"3565081661382277"},"htmlText":"Yes","listText":"Yes","text":"Yes","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322193852","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":3795795,"gmtCreate":1615779875543,"gmtModify":1635754388379,"authorId":3565081661382277,"author":{"id":3565081661382277,"idStr":"3565081661382277","authorId":3565081661382277,"name":"Mm101","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/01758aa877d9e5a9767d24de3a4e2ff1","vip":1,"crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":322193852,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"No","text":"No","html":"No"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":322199125,"gmtCreate":1615779796167,"gmtModify":1703492835463,"author":{"id":"3566532164444643","authorId":"3566532164444643","name":"ZEROHERO","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/62813b6df1c4722e559d112fadd5486a","vip":2,"crmLevel":8,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"authorIdStr":"3566532164444643","idStr":"3566532164444643"},"htmlText":"Buy BTC to 100k","listText":"Buy BTC to 100k","text":"Buy BTC to 100k","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/322199125","repostId":1111036221,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1111036221","pubTimestamp":1615779213,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1111036221?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-03-15 11:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1111036221","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditi","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>As an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.</li>\n <li>Also, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.</li>\n <li>However, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.</li>\n <li>Moreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.</li>\n <li>First, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.</li>\n</ul>\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45c215baa229cf7405d9a0462ee8f56\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"419\">Data by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d455eef19acfee7552f30f0053b96238\" tg-width=\"355\" tg-height=\"352\">Source: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very&nbsp;respected among institutional investors&nbsp;thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on&nbsp;CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4ec625085f9aa46ce5795f38f68de1e1\" tg-width=\"432\" tg-height=\"150\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the&nbsp;over 3.74 billion transactions&nbsp;which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/00737f337cc86fd22a170b1bdd43756a\" tg-width=\"632\" tg-height=\"404\">Source: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of&nbsp;48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers&nbsp;tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the&nbsp;percentage&nbsp;of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the&nbsp;executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation&nbsp;increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to&nbsp;Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/17e5add34da0e69fdee2664d6905aea0\" tg-width=\"467\" tg-height=\"219\">Source: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the&nbsp;first&nbsp;company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an&nbsp;earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s&nbsp;move to allow&nbsp;customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>PayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; 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}\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPayPal: Next-Generation Digital Payment With Blockchain\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-03-15 11:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PYPL":"PayPal"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4413777-paypal-stock-next-generation-digital-payment-blockchain","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1111036221","content_text":"Summary\n\nAs an operator of online money transfer services, which are digital alternatives to traditional paper methods, PayPal has set records in all financial metrics in the COVID world.\nAlso, compared to peers, it has a more elaborate cryptocurrency strategy.\nHowever, there are risks of overpaying for acquisitions in this richly-valued market, but the company's discipline in capital allocation is an important positive in this case.\nMoreover, exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, PayPal is a buy with a possible 19-20% upside.\nFirst, an overview of the company's crypto strategy is needed as some underestimate blockchain's ability to transform the digital payment industry.\n\nPayPal (PYPL) may have beaten revenue and earnings expectations by setting new records, but given its share price of $250, there is a need for more in-depth analysis of future opportunities, one of them being blockchain. In this case, some view the launch of its cryptocurrency service back in October last year as opportunistic, especially after the strong growth in the volume of crypto transactions, breaking a new record of$242 millionon January 11, the day the market dipped for bitcoin.\nFigure 1: Stock price performance.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, in view of the divergence between bitcoin's steep upward path and the payment processor's much more moderate upside, it is important to go deeper into PayPal's crypto strategy, especially after its recent investment in TaxBit.\nThe crypto strategy\nTaxation of cryptocurrencies is a hot topic with the IRS having specified its rules in this matter since 2019, during bitcoin's first wave of rising popularity. Crypto asset owners are now required to report transactions in their tax returns. Here comes TaxBit, a startup with a software application specializing in the taxation of crypto assets. Its solution allows users to automatically determine the taxation amount.\nNow, PayPal entered the capital of the startup (for an undisclosed amount), which also includes Winklevoss Capital among its shareholders. For investors, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also the co-founders of Gemini, an exchange that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides wallet services.\nFigure 2: Trading Cryptos with PayPal.\nSource: paypal.com\nFor this matter, aware of the massive potential in this space, PayPal currently serves 360 million wallet holders. Furthermore, by investing in the startup alongside pioneer crypto investors, the payment processing company appears to be betting on widespread use of digital currencies as it gains wider adoption by large institutions throughout the world. More importantly, with some accusing cryptocurrencies as being used for laundering money, choosing the less popular Gemini exchange platform (compared to Coinbase (COIN)), but very respected among institutional investors thanks to many extra security features and strict compliance with existing regulations, makes sense.\nLooking across the industry, unlike competitor Square (SQ), which bought 8027 bitcoins valued at $446.3 million, PayPal will not invest cash in cryptocurrencies according to an interview by John Rainey, the company's chief financial Officer on CNBC.\nTherefore, in contrast with Square which is focusing on the value of the digital currency itself, possibly as a means to shore up its balance sheet just like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) or MicroStrategy(NASDAQ:MSTR), PayPal aims to advance on the usage side, both as an additional means of payment for goods and trading for wallet holders.\nThus, PayPal is gradually diversifying activities in the rapidly developing digital currency market, but its finances have already been boosted by online money transfer services, which are electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders.\nThe finances\nPayPal just completed the strongest year in its history, achieving record growth of 73 million net new active customers, up 24% and ending the year with 377 million active accounts.\nConsequently, there have been new records in all financial metrics ranging from revenue, operating profits to net income margin.\nFigure 3: Yearly income statement with figures in millions of USD.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nThis has been made possible by consumers and businesses of all sizes embracing a digital-first strategy, in turn triggered by COVID-induced secular trend in online shopping during the lock-down periods. Subsequently, the vast majority of consumers have continued to shop online at elevated levels because of the convenience factor. This move is being encouraged by retailers who are encouraging consumers to visit their online stores and optimizing processes for home delivery.\nIn the fourth quarter of 2020, PayPal’s net payment volume amounted to around $277 billion, representing a 36% year-on-year growth adjusted for currency conversion. This payment volume was generated through the over 3.74 billion transactions which PayPal processed during that period. Total payment volumes have also surged steeply in 2020.\nFigure 4: PayPal's total payment volume from 1st quarter 2014 to 4th quarter 2020\nSource: statista.com\nThe company generated $1.1 billion in free cash flow, representing 50% growth from Q4-2019 thereby ending Q4-2020 with $19.2 billion of cash and a Debt/Equity metric of 48.47.\nAccording to the executives, they expect to add another 50 million net new active accounts in 2021, which is considerable and deserves further analysis in terms of any challenges which may crop up.\nPossible challenges\nFirst, addition of net new accounts should translate into 19% growth, with most forecasted in the first quarter, followed by more moderate growth in subsequent quarters of 2021. The guidance assumes that the aggregate revenue contribution of new growth initiatives together with operating margins expansion will be enough to offset the 4% eBay (EBAY) headwind in 2021. Here, some investors will remember the revenue shortfalls in mid-2019, after faster than expected decoupling with the eCommerce play.\nSecond, while payment solutions'reviewers tend to focus on the visible transaction fees, or the charges which merchants pay for each payment transaction processed by PayPal or competitors, there is the more important Approval Rates metric which is often overlooked.\nNow, approval rate is the percentage of a merchant’s transactions that successfully pass through the authorization process. Higher is this value, more is the number of successful payment approvals out of the total number of transactions attempted. This in turn means higher revenues for both merchants and PayPal as the payment processor.\nThus, for merchants, in addition to fees, selecting the right payment partner is key to increasing sales, and according to the executives, PayPal offers approval rates higher than the industry average.\nIn this respect, PayPal has improved approval rates by leveraging on its vast data sets and network of partners consisting of more than 350 million consumers spanning across 200 countries, 29 million merchants, as well as global banks, card networks and regulators.\nIts approach also centers on robust risk solutions with artificial intelligence and real-time decision-making algorithms helping to approve high quality consumers while aiding to block out fraudsters.\nThird, in addition to organic growth, there is a need for acquisition of digital assets, which currently carry inflated valuations due to the pandemic. In this case, the company exercises tremendous amount of discipline in overall capital allocation and looks at inorganic opportunities only to complement what is achieved organically.\nStill, I foresee some expensive acquisitions in the crypto space but I am comforted by the somewhat unique FinTech ecosystem, where in addition to out-sized growth rates, companies tend to be highly profitable with significant free cash flows.\nValuations and key takeaways\nPayPal is at the beginning of an extensive road map around crypto, blockchain and digital currencies. The company is working with regulators and central banks to create the next-generation financial system, as an alternative to handling cash, as well as to make transactions less expensive and faster. Thus, record transaction volumes should continue, whether bitcoin rises or slumps, following wider adoption, as the total number of mined bitcoins in circulation increases.\nIn the meanwhile, there are other growth levers.\nFirst, Venmo, PayPal's peer-to-peer payment app that allows for the quick and easy exchange of money directly between individuals continued its strong performance with fourth quarter transactions of $47 billion, up 60% on a year-over-year basis and continuing to see traction in early January as eligible customers were able to cash their stimulus checks within the Venmo app for the first time. Later, the Venmo credit card will be available followed by the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptos.\nSecond, the company expects a rebound in travel and events in the second quarter driven by vaccination campaigns. This should benefit the Braintree side of the business which suffered from a 50% revenue shortfall due to COVID impacts.\nThird, PayPal now owns 100% of GoPay and as such it is the only foreign money transfer company to operate a full domestic payments business in China. However, GoPay which is licensed both for digital and mobile transactions operates in a market dominated by payments giants like Alipay, owned by Alibaba (BABA), and WeChat Pay, owned by Tencent Holdings(OTCPK:TCEHY).\nThe Chinese authorities are currently trying to strike the right balance between innovation along with prudent regulation and PayPal aims to have its services used by people coming in China, so that they don’t necessarily have to download WeChat Pay.\nFourth, in case the pandemic persists, people's lack of mobility should benefit the core PayPal business, in a market where Total Transaction Value in Digital Payments is projected to reach $6.7 trillion in 2021, up from $5.2 trillion in 2020, according to Statista.\nFigure 5: Comparing with peers.\nSource: Seeking Alpha\nFor investors looking to invest in a payment processor exhibiting the right balance between growth and profitability, the solution is PayPal. Also, the FinTech is in advance compared to both Mastercard (MA) and Visa (V) in terms of approach to the digital currency. Hence, PayPal became the first company to get a conditional BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October.\nIts lower Debt to Equity ratio also means ability to raise more capital for financing investments.\nThus, at 13x trailing Price to Sales multiples, PayPal is undervalued. Now, given the company's ability to maintain an elevated number of daily active users as a result of expanding scale and increasing engagement, sales could increase by more than 19%.\nConsequently, PayPal is a buy with a target share price of $290-292, and this is not because of bitcoin euphoria but as a beneficiary of pandemic-accelerated digital change across the payment industry.\nAdditionally, strong focus on cost optimization could result in an earnings beat, as it has been the case during 14 out of the 15 last quarters.\nFinally, contrarily to what many think, PayPal’s move to allow customers to trade cryptocurrencies required years-long talent recruitment effort in the relatively young field of blockchain.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"}],"hasMoreComments":true,"newsSizeData":{"likeSize":52,"commentSize":25,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false}}