PayPal Rolls Out Venmo to Retailers Ahead of 3rd-Quarter Earnings

Two days ahead of its third-quarter 2017 earnings report, which will be released after the closing bell on Thursday, PayPal Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) announced that it's extending its popular social payment app Venmo to over 2 million retailers in the U.S. According to a blog post by Chief Operating Officer Bill Ready, this will allow Venmo users to check out in-store wherever PayPal is accepted.

Venmo has grown virally since Chicago-based Braintree, now a subsidiary of PayPal, acquired the then-fledgling company in 2012. Last quarter, Venmo booked $8 billion in total payments volume, or TPV, a measure of the dollar volume transacted on a given payments platform. This accounted for no less than 7.5% of PayPal's total TPV during the quarter.

Yet monetization has been slow, as Venmo's initial focus has been on scaling its user base. Millennials in particular have proved rapid adopters of the platform, which allows friends to split checks at restaurants or transfer obligations like rent money to each other in a social network setting without a fee.

Source: Fool.com