We have all witnessed how great is PayPal for eCommerce. Consumers love it because it doesn’t require or keep record credit card information and it fosters fast and secure transactions.
How influential is PayPal in the global eCommerce?
PayPal isn’t only a payment gateway nowadays, but it developed its own ecosystem online. Recent numbers show that PayPal has 237 million active users, 19 million merchant accounts, and 7.6 billion transactions per year.
Source: MarTech Zone
According to Connexity’s recent Bizrate Insights study, PayPal ranks as the third most preferred payment method after Visa and Mastercard.
PayPal in the world of premium video
PayPal and video eCommerce are quite a match due to the speed and convenience (its One Touch™ checkout and refunds management surely help).
For Cleeng, this payment method gains more importance as we grow and spread on new markets. We are proud to be one of the few OTT technology providers that integrate PayPal payments in the default payment options. The turnkey nature of the Cleeng platform gives broadcasters a plethora of payment options in their pursuit to succeed locally or globally.
Last year, almost one-third of the total paid transactions processed by Cleeng were done from PayPal. And we see a positive trend if we look at the trendline in the last three years.
Figure 1: PayPal transactions progressively gain share over credit card methods (Visa)
Looking at the split of live vs on-demand video, we see that viewers of live content (one-time) prefer PayPal more than the viewers of subscription content (recurring).
Figure 2. Transactions for Live vs On-demand video (2017)
Looking at the geographic spread of Cleeng transactions, PayPal ranks first in Asia-Pacific. In the region dominated by cash and wallet payments, PayPal proved to be a preferred method due to the ever-increasing local adoption of mobile devices and the streaming services.
Figure 3. PayPal is the preferred payment method for video in APAC (2017)
If we take a deeper dive into the top countries with most PayPal transactions as a percentage of the total, we can draw two main conclusions.
- German OTT consumers love purchasing video with PayPal;
- PayPal usage varies significantly between the Nordic countries, with Norway leading the way.
Figure 4. More than 40% of Germans buy premium video with PayPal
Here is one encouraging pattern. There is a positive trend of increasing PayPal transactions over time (as a share from total), while the refund rate slowly decreases.
Figure 5. Overall PayPal usage shows a positive trend
Figure 6. PayPal refunds are slowly dropping
Lastly, there is a correlation between social logins and PayPal transactions. Consumers love quick authentication and purchase processes, so we detected that viewers tend to use PayPal more when they log in with their social accounts to their favorite OTT services.
Figure 7. Viewers tend to use PayPal more when they log in with their social accounts
Conclusion
All in all, global consumers love paying online with PayPal due to speed and security. Our data says that this payment method gives a boost to the overall video e-commerce space and its usage rate shows a steady growth.
PayPal helps companies like Cleeng to develop and improve its payment technologies and ease the international expansion of media brands that want to sell over-the-top video. We are proud to be one of the few OTT technology providers that integrate PayPal payments.
