Maybe you’re considering getting a PayPal account, or maybe you’ve had one for a while now. Either way, we’re sure you’ll find our post on the newest PayPal statistics eye-opening and quite useful.
PayPal is one of the easier technology companies to write about accurately, because it reports a tight set of defined metrics every quarter and sticks to them. The difficulty is that almost nobody uses its terms correctly.
PayPal does not report users. It reports active accounts, and the distinction is not pedantry: one person can hold a personal and a business account, and an account is counted as active on transaction activity in the preceding 12 months, subject to exclusions the company sets out. So the headline figure counts accounts that did something in the last year, not people.
Three other definitions matter below. Total payment volume is money moving across the platform, which is not PayPal’s revenue, and the two differ by a factor of roughly fifty. Payment transactions count individual payments, which includes transactions PayPal processes for merchants through Braintree as well as branded PayPal checkouts. And monthly active accounts is a separate engagement measure that cannot be subtracted from the annual figure to produce a count of dormant accounts.
Key PayPal Statistics for 2026
- PayPal had 439 million active accounts at December 31, 2025 and again at June 30, 2026.
- It processed $1.79 trillion in total payment volume during 2025, up 7%.
- It handled 25.4 billion payment transactions in 2025, down 4% on 2024.
- Net revenue was $33.172 billion in 2025, up 4%, with net income of $5.233 billion, up 26%.
- Q2 2026 payment volume reached $486.4 billion, up 10% year over year.
- Each active account averaged 60.0 payment transactions over the trailing twelve months.
- Venmo revenue grew about 20% to roughly $1.7 billion in 2025.
- PayPal employed about 23,800 people at the end of 2025.
PayPal Accounts and Engagement
These are PayPal’s own key performance indicators, reported quarterly and defined consistently, which makes them the only reliable basis for describing the platform’s size.
1. PayPal had 439 million active accounts.
(Source: PayPal FY2025 results and Q2 2026 results)
PayPal reported 439 million active accounts at December 31, 2025, an increase of 4.7 million or 1.1% on the year before, and 439 million again at June 30, 2026.
Two things to take from that. These are accounts, not users: PayPal defines an active account as one that completed a transaction in the preceding 12 months, and one person may hold more than one. And growth has essentially flattened, from the rapid expansion of the pandemic years to roughly one percent, which is why PayPal’s own reporting now emphasises engagement and volume rather than account totals. The figure of 392 million previously on this page was PayPal’s 2020 count.
2. About 227 million accounts are active monthly.
(Source: PayPal, Q3 2025)
PayPal reported roughly 227 million monthly active accounts as of Q3 2025, up about 2% year over year.
This is a separate engagement measure with a different window, and the temptation is to subtract it from 439 million and announce that 212 million accounts are dormant. That does not follow. The annual figure counts accounts active at any point in twelve months, which legitimately includes people who use PayPal a few times a year for occasional purchases rather than abandoned accounts.
3. Each active account made 60.0 payment transactions.
(Source: PayPal Q2 2026 results)
Payment transactions per active account reached 60.0 on a trailing-twelve-month basis in Q2 2026, up about 3% year over year.
This is the metric PayPal leans on now that account growth has slowed, and it is doing the work the account number used to: roughly flat accounts transacting more often still produces growth. Note it is an average across all accounts and includes merchant processing volume, so it is not a typical consumer’s usage.
4. PayPal employed about 23,800 people.
(Source: PayPal FY2025 Form 10-K)
PayPal reported approximately 23,800 employees globally at December 31, 2025.
That is down from the figure this page previously carried, around 26,500, reflecting the restructuring rounds the company has run since 2023. It is a headcount disclosure rather than an operating metric, and worth keeping in that light.
Payment Volume, Transactions and Revenue
Three different numbers get described loosely as “how big PayPal is”, and they measure money moving, payments made and money earned respectively. They are not interchangeable and they do not even move in the same direction.
5. PayPal processed $1.79 trillion in payment volume in 2025.
(Source: PayPal FY2025 results)
Total payment volume reached $1.79 trillion during 2025, up 7% (6% currency-neutral). In the second quarter of 2026 alone, TPV was $486.4 billion, up 10% year over year.
TPV is the value of payments moving across PayPal’s platform, not money PayPal keeps. It is roughly fifty times the company’s revenue, because PayPal earns a small percentage of each payment it processes. Quoting TPV as revenue, or as market share, overstates the business by that factor, and the old claim here that PayPal “handles 22% of all online transactions in the US” was a share claim PayPal has never made. For a finance-focused view of active accounts, payment volume, transactions, revenue and payment economics, see these PayPal statistics.
6. Payment transactions fell 4% to 25.4 billion.
(Source: PayPal FY2025 results)
PayPal handled 25.4 billion payment transactions in 2025, a decrease of 4% on 2024, even as payment volume rose 7%.
Fewer transactions carrying more money is an unusual combination, and the explanation is in PayPal’s own disclosure: excluding payment service provider transactions, the figure was 16.1 billion, up 6%. The decline is concentrated in the unbranded processing business, Braintree, where PayPal has been deliberately walking away from low-margin volume. The branded business people recognise as PayPal grew.
7. Net revenue was $33.172 billion in 2025.
(Source: PayPal FY2025 results)
PayPal generated $33.172 billion in net revenue during 2025, up 4% on 2024.
Set that against $1.79 trillion of payment volume and the shape of the business is clear: PayPal keeps a little under 2% of what passes through it. The figure this page previously cited, $21.4 billion, was 2020 revenue.
8. Net income reached $5.233 billion.
(Source: PayPal FY2025 results)
Net income for 2025 was $5.233 billion, up 26% from $4.147 billion in 2024, substantially faster than the 4% revenue growth.
That gap is the story of PayPal’s recent strategy: margins improved through cost reduction and the shift away from low-margin processing, rather than through rapid top-line growth.
9. Q2 2026 net income was $1.104 billion, down 12%.
(Source: PayPal Q2 2026 results)
For the quarter ended June 30, 2026, PayPal reported net revenue of $8.7 billion, up 5%, and net income of $1.104 billion, down 12% year over year. Payment transactions reached 6.8 billion, up 8%.
The quarterly picture is therefore mixed rather than uniformly positive: volume and transactions grew, revenue grew modestly, and profit fell. Quoting the $1.104 billion without its direction, as a headline number, would give the opposite impression of the one the quarter actually supports.
Company, Venmo and History
The company’s own history, and the one subsidiary large enough to have its own reported revenue line.
10. PayPal was founded in 1998.
(Source: PayPal)
PayPal was founded in 1998, originally as Confinity, and merged with Elon Musk’s X.com before taking the PayPal name and going public in 2002.
11. eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002.
(Source: PayPal, eBay)
eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for about $1.5 billion, months after its IPO, and the two separated again in 2015 when PayPal was spun off as an independent public company.
The separation matters for reading older statistics: PayPal figures from before 2015 describe a division of eBay operating largely in its marketplace, not the standalone payments company reporting today.
12. Venmo revenue grew about 20% to roughly $1.7 billion.
(Source: PayPal, 2025)
PayPal reported Venmo revenue of approximately $1.7 billion in 2025, growing about 20%, well ahead of the parent company’s 4%.
PayPal no longer publishes a Venmo user count, which is why the 52 million figure previously on this page has gone rather than been updated. Revenue is what the company discloses now, and it should not be converted back into users: there is no public average-revenue-per-user figure for Venmo to divide by.
13. PayPal bought Honey Science for $4 billion in 2019.
(Source: PayPal)
PayPal acquired the browser-extension and deals company Honey Science for about $4 billion in 2019, its largest acquisition.
This is historical context rather than a current operating metric. PayPal does not break out Honey’s contribution in its reporting.
Wrap Up
PayPal in 2026 is a company whose account base has stopped growing, at 439 million for two consecutive reporting dates, and which is pursuing growth through engagement and margin instead. Payment volume rose 7% to $1.79 trillion in 2025, revenue rose 4% to $33.172 billion, net income rose 26%, and transactions per account edged up to 60.0.
The one figure that fell, transactions, is also the one that best rewards reading the detail: down 4% overall, but up 6% once the unbranded processing business is excluded. A headline decline concealing underlying growth is the kind of thing lost entirely when statistics are quoted without their definitions.
Which is the habit worth taking from this page. Accounts are not users. Payment volume is not revenue, and is about fifty times larger. Monthly active accounts cannot be subtracted from annual ones. And a quarterly profit figure quoted without its direction, as with Q2 2026’s $1.104 billion, down 12%, can suggest the opposite of what happened.
