P2P may be growing fast for banks, but that doesn’t mean Venmo is giving up the P2P throne.
Venmo users sent $8 billion in P2P transactions through the service in the second quarter, PayPal reported during its earnings call yesterday. This marks a more than 100% increase from this time last year, when Venmo users sent about $4 billion in payments.
PayPal’s overall growth this quarter exceeded expectations, with the company reporting $3.14 billion in total revenue. The continuing popularity of Venmo was certainly a factor, as Chief Financial Officer John Rainey noted during PayPal’s earnings call.
Rainey said on the call:
P2P continues to be a meaningful contributor TPV, representing approximately 21% of total payment volume.
In the quarter, active accounts grew 12% and we ended the second quarter with 210 million active accounts. Active account growth was driven by strength in our core PayPal business as well as growth in Venmo.
Thanks in no small part to its standalone P2P service, PayPal is continuing to see increased growth in users as well as payments.
As well as adding more active accounts (PayPal added 6.5 million new active accounts in the quarter to 210 million, according to company documents,) the payments company also reported an increase in payment volume, specifically with mobile transactions.
Mobile volume grew 50% in the quarter, according to PayPal, with those transactions representing 35% of the company’s total payment volume of $106 billion.
Venmo’s growth is not a surprise but it shouldn’t get too comfortable, especially as P2P grows to be a more mainstream financial service with the help of services like Zelle. Consumers are growing more comfortable sending and receiving money through P2P services even through traditional banks.
For instance, Bank of America customers actually beat Venmo in payment volume this quarter, with the bank’s P2P users sending out $18 billion in payments for the quarter, according to the bank’s earnings, reported earlier this month.