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PayPal Statistics 2026: Accounts, Revenue and TPV
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TL;DR:
- 439 million active accounts at 30 June 2026; this is a rolling 12-month activity count, not unique people or monthly users.
- $486.4 billion TPV and $8.68 billion net revenues in Q2 2026; the latest completed annual figures are $1.79 trillion TPV and $33.2 billion revenue for 2025.
- Company-wide revenue-to-TPV ratios describe monetization; they do not predict a merchant’s processing fees.
- A market-share or country-usage claim needs a stated population, geography, period and source.
- PayPal’s US dispute-fee guidance uses qualifying disputed amounts and net sales over a three-month window, with a separate transaction-count condition for the High Volume tier.
PayPal reported 439 million active accounts, $486.4 billion in total payment volume (TPV) and $8.68 billion in net revenues for Q2 2026, its latest reported quarter as of 22 October 2026.
Its latest completed annual period is 2025. These statistics measure different things: accounts, payment value and company revenue. Use the period and definition with every number, especially when comparing payment providers or planning merchant fees.
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Top Line PayPal Statistics
- Active accounts at 30 June 2026+0.3% year over year; accounts, not unique peoplePayPal Q2 2026 earnings release
- 439M
- Total payment volume · Q2 2026+10% year over year; +9% currency-neutralPayPal Q2 2026 earnings release
- $486.4B
- Net revenues · Q2 2026+5% year over year; +3% currency-neutralPayPal Q2 2026 earnings release
- $8.68B
Additional Quarterly and Full-Year Metrics
| Metric | Value | Quarter or Year | Definition | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transaction margin dollars | $3.90 billion (+1%) | Q2 2026 | Net revenue less transaction expense and transaction and credit losses; a non-GAAP measure | PayPal Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Payment transactions | 6.75 billion (+8%); 60.0 per active account over 12 months | Q2 2026 | Count of payments processed; the per-account figure is trailing twelve months | PayPal Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Free cash flow | $1.78 billion | Q2 2026 | Cash from operations less capital expenditures, as reported | PayPal Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Total payment volume | $1.79 trillion (+7%) | Full year 2025 | Annual value of payments processed | PayPal Q4 and full year 2025 earnings release |
| Net revenues | $33.2 billion (+4%) | Full year 2025 | PayPal's annual revenue | PayPal Q4 and full year 2025 earnings release |
| Transaction margin dollars | $15.5 billion (+6%) | Full year 2025 | Annual transaction margin dollars; a non-GAAP measure | PayPal Q4 and full year 2025 earnings release |
| Payment transactions | 25.4 billion (-4%); 16.1 billion excluding PSP volume (+6%) | Full year 2025 | Company-wide payments; ex-PSP excludes unbranded card processing transactions | PayPal Q4 and full year 2025 earnings release |
| GAAP net income | $5.23 billion (+26%) | Full year 2025 | Net income under US GAAP | PayPal Q4 and full year 2025 earnings release |
| Free cash flow | $5.6 billion | Full year 2025 | Cash from operations less capital expenditures, as reported | PayPal Q4 and full year 2025 earnings release |
Year-over-year growth compares each period with the same period a year earlier. Transaction margin dollars and free cash flow are PayPal-defined non-GAAP measures; free cash flow and adjusted free cash flow are different figures. Full-year results are also available in the SEC-hosted 2025 earnings release.
TPV, Revenue, Active Accounts and Unique Users Are Different Measures
Completed payment value, net of reversals, including partner-enabled payments and excluding gateway-only activity.
PayPal’s company revenue includes transaction fees and other value added services. It is a different numerator from transaction revenue alone.
An account qualifies after a transaction in the preceding 12 months. Consumer, merchant and qualifying partner accounts are included.
A person can hold multiple accounts, and the total includes businesses. The active-account figure cannot establish a count of unique people.
Definitions: PayPal Q2 2026 Form 10-Q. Gateway-only transactions are excluded from PayPal’s TPV, payment-transaction and active-account metrics.
What PayPal’s Take Rate Does and Does Not Tell a Merchant
Dividing revenue by TPV produces a company-wide ratio, not a quote for your checkout. The numerator matters: using all net revenues includes other value added services, while using transaction revenues isolates the transaction-revenue category.
$8.682B ÷ $486.448B ≈ 1.78%Includes both transaction revenue and other value added services.
$7.832B ÷ $486.448B ≈ 1.61%Uses the transaction-revenue category alone, with the same TPV denominator.
Author calculations from Q2 2026 reported figures in PayPal’s quarterly filing. Neither ratio is a merchant processing fee. Product mix, payment type, geography, currency conversion and your contract determine your rate.
For a merchant cost forecast, use the fees on your own PayPal statements divided by the corresponding sales, with refunds, currency conversion and dispute charges tracked separately. Do not apply either company-wide ratio to your store’s sales as an expected fee.
PayPal Quarterly Results: Q4 2025 to Q2 2026
| Period | TPV | Net Revenues | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q4 2025 | $475.1 billion (+9%) | $8.7 billion (+4%) | PayPal Q4 and full year 2025 earnings release |
| Q1 2026 | $464.0 billion (+11%) | $8.35 billion | PayPal Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Q2 2026 | $486.4 billion (+10%) | $8.68 billion (+5%) | PayPal Q2 2026 earnings release |
Quarterly and annual TPV should not be compared directly. The 2025 annual figure is the sum of that year’s four quarters; Q2 2026 is one quarter. Multiplying the latest quarter by four would create an annualized estimate, not a reported 2026 annual result. The growth rates in the table are year over year, not quarter over quarter.
How Many PayPal Transactions Happen Per Second?
PayPal processed about 805 payment transactions per second on average in 2025. That is the 25.4 billion payment transactions PayPal reported for the full year, divided by the seconds in a year. It equals about 69.6 million transactions a day.
PayPal does not publish a per-second or per-day count. The figures below are author calculations from reported totals. They are yearly or quarterly averages, so they do not show peak load on a busy shopping day.
- Full year 2025, all payment transactions25.4 billion ÷ 365 days ÷ 86,400 seconds; about 69.6 million a day
- ≈805
- Full year 2025, excluding PSP volume16.1 billion; leaves out unbranded card processing; about 44.1 million a day
- ≈510
- Q2 2026, all payment transactions6.75 billion ÷ 91 days; about 74.2 million a day
- ≈860
Inputs: PayPal Q4 and full year 2025 earnings release and PayPal Q2 2026 earnings release. Rounded to the nearest 5 or 10.
Pick the count that fits your question. The all-in total includes PayPal’s unbranded card processing for other businesses. The ex-PSP count leaves that out. The two moved in opposite directions in 2025: total payment transactions fell 4%, while ex-PSP transactions grew 6%.
How Many People Use PayPal?
PayPal reports 439 million active accounts, up 0.3% year over year at the end of Q2 2026. Active accounts grew 1.1%, or 4.7 million, during 2025, per the PayPal Q4 and full year 2025 earnings release.
The figure combines consumer and merchant accounts, including accounts from platform access partners. Because the total includes businesses and multiple accounts per user, a unique-people count cannot be inferred from it.
PayPal Active Accounts: 2024, 2025 and 2026
- 434 million active accounts
- 439 million active accounts
- 439 million active accounts
Rounded snapshots, not monthly active users. The 2024 and 2025 counts come from the 2025 Form 10-K; the latest snapshot comes from the Q2 2026 Form 10-Q. Matching rounded counts do not imply exactly zero growth.
Who Uses PayPal the Most? Check the Country Metric
A country’s survey penetration, number of websites accepting PayPal and share of PayPal revenue answer different questions. PayPal’s headline active-account disclosures do not provide a country-by-country table of unique users. Use a dated local adoption survey to assess customer preference, and your own checkout results to decide which methods earn space in your store.
Country tables also need a basic consistency check: the listed populations should fit within their stated global total, use the same activity window and explain whether accounts, people or websites are counted. Do not label a website count or a country’s revenue share as its number of PayPal users.
PayPal Products: Keep Populations Separate
PayPal-wide figures above cover the whole company, including branded and unbranded activity. PayPal's branded checkout, Venmo, Braintree and other products have their own metrics, and their volumes and account counts cannot be added independently because scopes and definitions differ and populations may overlap.
This page does not combine them. For Venmo, branded checkout or Braintree figures, read the segment disclosures in the PayPal quarterly results materials and keep each product's definition with its number.
Keep the ex-PSP filter too: PayPal’s releases use it to exclude unbranded card processing transactions and accounts. The 60.0 transactions per active account reported for Q2 2026 uses the preceding 12 months of payments divided by accounts active at quarter end. It is not 60 purchases during the quarter, and it is not a typical customer’s shopping frequency.
PayPal Market Share: Define the Measure
There is no single universal global market-share figure for PayPal. Three different things get called market share: share of payment volume, share of online sales by method, and share of websites where a tracker detects a PayPal button.
They give different answers and are not interchangeable. Website-technology trackers such as Datanyze count detected sites, which says nothing about sales volume, and they are independent estimates. Figures from those trackers were not re-verified for this update and are not repeated here.
PayPal and Stripe: Volume Comparison
| Company | Total Payment Volume | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| PayPal | $1.79 trillion | Calendar 2025 | PayPal Q4 and full year 2025 earnings release |
| Stripe | $1.9 trillion | Calendar 2025 | Stripe 2025 update |
Both are actual calendar-year 2025 totals, rather than annualized run rates. PayPal reports its TPV as an operating metric in public-company disclosures; Stripe, a private company, reports volume generated by businesses running on Stripe. Their scope and definitions differ, so the totals provide scale context and cannot establish a market-share ranking. See Stripe statistics for Stripe's definitions.
PayPal Dispute Rate Threshold
PayPal’s US dispute-rate guidance describes the ratio as the total disputed amount of item-not-received and not-as-described claims divided by net sales for the previous three calendar months.
It includes qualifying claims escalated to PayPal or filed with the buyer’s card issuer or bank, and excludes unauthorized-transaction and billing-error claims. This merchant fee metric is different from PayPal’s company-wide transaction or credit loss rates.
$1,500 qualifying claims ÷ $100,000 net sales = 1.5%Assume both amounts belong to the same previous-three-calendar-month window. This is not a count of disputes divided by orders.
Rate ≥ 1.5% + more than 100 salesPayPal’s US guidance uses more than 100 sales transactions in the previous three full months. The fee tier is determined when the case is created.
Illustration of the US help-center definition, not a reconstruction of your account. Check the Dispute Rate and Dispute Fee Tier shown in PayPal’s Resolution Center and your local terms.
High Volume treatment may affect Seller Protection eligibility, response time and fee exemptions under PayPal’s published guidance; those are possible account consequences, not guaranteed changes for every merchant. Check the current local terms and case deadline before relying on a threshold. For fee context across processors, see chargeback fees. Chargeflow supports PayPal disputes.
Global Chargeback Outlook
A Mastercard article on the true cost of a chargeback (updated June 2026, research by Datos Insights) projects about 286 million chargebacks worldwide in 2026 and 359 million a year by 2029, a 37% increase from 2025.
It also reports that around 45% of merchant chargeback volume globally is fraudulent, both third-party and first-party (2025 data). The research describes card disputes in general. It is a global trend and not a forecast of PayPal's own dispute volume.
Related Payment Statistics
For wallets and installments, see BNPL statistics. For digital wallet adoption, see Apple Pay and Google Pay statistics.
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PayPal Statistics FAQs
How many people use PayPal?
PayPal reported 439 million active accounts at 30 June 2026. An active account completed a qualifying transaction in the preceding 12 months. The total includes consumer, merchant and platform-partner accounts, and a user can hold multiple accounts, so it cannot be converted into a unique-person count.
How much payment volume does PayPal process?
PayPal processed $486.4 billion in TPV in Q2 2026, up 10% year over year, and $1.79 trillion in full-year 2025, up 7%. TPV measures completed payment value net of reversals and excludes gateway-only transactions. It is neither company revenue nor a forecast of the full year 2026.
How Many Transactions Does PayPal Process Per Day?
About 69.6 million a day on average in 2025, or roughly 805 per second, based on 25.4 billion payment transactions for the year. Excluding unbranded card processing (ex-PSP), the 2025 average is about 44.1 million a day. PayPal reports quarterly and annual totals, not daily counts.
What is PayPal's market share?
There is no single universal PayPal market-share percentage. The answer depends on whether the source measures payment volume, online sales by method or websites accepting PayPal, and on its geography and date. Use the source’s denominator rather than treating a website-technology share as a share of all payments.
How much revenue does PayPal make?
PayPal reported $33.2 billion in net revenues for 2025 (+4%) and $8.68 billion for Q2 2026 (+5%).
Does PayPal Have 439 Million Monthly Active Users?
No. The 439 million figure uses a rolling 12-month transaction test, not a monthly activity test. Monthly active accounts, product-specific accounts and unique people describe different populations. Keep the source’s activity window and product scope attached to each number rather than relabeling active accounts as monthly users.
Who Uses PayPal the Most?
The answer depends on the measure: local survey penetration, active accounts, merchant websites and payment value are different populations. PayPal’s global active-account headline does not establish a country ranking of unique users. Merchants should use a dated, clearly defined local adoption study and compare it with their own checkout conversion.
Is PayPal Bigger Than Apple Pay?
A meaningful comparison needs the same period, geography and metric. PayPal’s company-wide active accounts or TPV cannot be compared directly with an estimate of Apple Pay users or accepting websites. Apple’s description of Apple Pay covers card payments through Apple devices; that is a different scope from PayPal’s company-wide metrics.
Can PayPal’s Take Rate Predict My Merchant Fees?
No. The revenue-to-TPV ratios above combine company-wide activity and are not a merchant price list. Forecast your cost from your actual product, payment method, country, currency and contract, then reconcile processing, conversion and dispute fees with your own PayPal statements.
Sources
- PayPal Q2 2026 earnings release
- PayPal Q4 and full year 2025 earnings release
- PayPal quarterly results
- Stripe 2025 update
Figures and definitions checked on 13 October 2026; per-second and per-day calculations added 22 October 2026. Q2 2026 is the latest reported quarter verified for this update; 2025 is the latest completed annual period. Derived calculations and hypothetical examples are labeled separately.
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