PayPal Taps New Markets: Will Interoperability Fuel Its Growth?

PayPal Holdings’ PYPL launch of PayPal World this fall marks a pivotal shift toward global wallet interoperability. The platform will initially unite PayPal, Venmo, Mercado Pago, NPCI’s UPI and Tenpay Global under a cloud native, API framework, facilitating nearly two billion users. By enabling UPI or Weixin Pay users to check out via a familiar PayPal button, the move aims at reducing friction for cross border commerce.

With this seamless Venmo-PayPal interoperability, for the first time, peer to peer transfers can flow globally, and by 2026, Venmo holders will be able to shop in-store and online at PayPal enabled merchants. The move is a smart one as PayPal is blending consumer reach with merchant acceptance, augmenting its “branded checkout” promise and tapping into Venmo’s younger base with real commerce utility.

The platform’s readiness for agentic, AI driven buying (shopping via chat assistants) and future stablecoin support signals forward thinking. Competitors focused solely on wallet-to-wallet payments may struggle to match this breadth, positioning PayPal ahead in emerging commerce trends.

PayPal is pushing forward with a multi-pronged transformation. The company is transitioning from a transactional payment provider to a holistic commerce partner by consolidating its services into a single PayPal platform to harness the full potential of its two-sided network, supporting both consumers and merchants. Focusing on improving user experience, enhancing merchant relationships and expanding international capabilities are the key moves that could unlock long-term growth.

How Are V and GPN Scaling Up Cross-Border Payments?

Visa’s V network powers more than 4.8 billion credentials and 300 billion transactions annually across 150 million merchant locations, leveraging its “Visa as a Service" stack to deliver modular APIs for fraud, stablecoins, digital identity, AI driven payments and small seller acceptance. Its Commercial & Money Movement and Value added Services continue to drive growth while expanding in cross border payment domains.

Global Payments Inc. GPN is streamlining its global commerce operations with a renewed focus on omnichannel merchant services. Key efforts of Global Payments include the rollout of its Genius POS platform, integration of Worldpay and unified API capabilities. These efforts of Global Payments aim to modernize commerce infrastructure, improve scalability, and expand global reach across in-person, online and omnichannel payment experiences.

PYPL’s Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Shares of PayPal have declined 10.2% year to date, underperforming both the broader industry as well as the S&P 500 composite.

From a valuation standpoint, PayPal shares are trading cheap, as suggested by the Value Score of A. In terms of forward 12-month P/E, PYPL stock is trading at 14.14X compared with the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry’s 22.13X.

PayPal’s estimate revisions reflect a positive trend. Estimates for second-quarter and full-year 2025 and full-year 2026 EPS have been revised upward over the past month. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2025 EPS suggests 9.5% growth year over year, while the same for 2026 calls for 11.5% growth year over year. 

At present, PayPal carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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