The news: PayPal expanded its PayPal Credit offering with a physical card, making the line of credit more broadly accessible in store and online.
Why this matters: PayPal is coming off of a long “transition year” in 2024 that involved improving profitability at the cost of some transaction volume.
Now, it’s looking for a boost to put itself ahead. It rolled out PayPal One this year to solidify itself as a major B2B player Issuing a PayPal Credit card shows PayPal is also looking to further entrench its well-known customer-facing business.
This move also piggybacks on PayPal’s recent PayPal Everywhere marketing campaign, which encourages customers to use PayPal’s payment solutions—debit, credit, and BNPL—anywhere they shop.
Existing card portfolio: This isn’t PayPal’s first card. PayPal offers the PayPal debit card, Venmo debit card, and Paypal prepaid Mastercard.
PayPal also already offers a cash-back credit card.
Our take: Debuting another credit card to tap retail sales could be a sound strategy, but PayPal’s current rollout of PayPal Credit could be streamlined. The simultaneous approval process of the PayPal Credit physical card and the PayPal Credit digital line will likely be disorienting for consumers.
It’s also unclear what differentiates this product from PayPal’s other credit products—unlike the cash-back card, it offers no rewards. Unless PayPal plans to prevent Pay Later from ever becoming available in-store, each product offers overlapping features that may be difficult for consumers to keep straight.
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