X

PayPal's digital payments reign continues

The leading online payments network hits 200 million active customer accounts and 50 million One Touch users.

Ben Fox Rubin Former senior reporter
Ben Fox Rubin was a senior reporter for CNET News in Manhattan, reporting on Amazon, e-commerce and mobile payments. He previously worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and got his start at newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Ben Fox Rubin
2 min read
454754269.jpg

One Touch is the most rapidly adopted product in PayPal's 18-year history.

Getty Images

PayPal took the chance Monday to pat itself on the back.

The king of digital payments said it reached a big milestone, hitting 200 million active customer accounts. Granted, that isn't really a surprise, since it reported 197 million accounts a month ago. Perhaps more importantly, 50 million of those customers have now opted in to use PayPal's One Touch, which allows users to stay signed in to their accounts and avoid repeatedly having to type in a password when buying from millions of retailers.

One Touch now has become the most rapidly adopted product in PayPal's 18-year history, after accounts using the feature more than doubled from 21 million in April last year.

One Touch is an especially important feature for PayPal, allowing the company to make it easier for people to buy on mobile without having to type in their addresses, credit cards and passwords on those tiny screens. Last year, PayPal users made more than $100 billion in mobile payments, representing a third of the company's total payment volume.

With 200 million active accounts, PayPal enjoys a massive lead over rival Amazon Payments, which earlier this month said 33 million customers have used its service since it launched in 2013. While PayPal is a payments provider, Amazon is also a retailer, which has caused fellow merchants to avoid a service provided by a major rival.

Similar services being developed to make online and mobile shopping easier include Visa Checkout and MasterCard's Masterpass.

The company looked back at its nearly two decades in business in a letter to the PayPal community Monday. Customers have used the service for "more than 29 billion payments worth $1.7 trillion," CEO Dan Schulman noted in the letter.