Online payment system PayPal Holdings Inc. is accepted at 810 of the Top 1000 online retailers ranked in Digital Commerce 360’s Top 1000. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest online retailers in North America, according to ecommerce sales. 

That’s up 7.3% compared with pre-pandemic 2019. PayPal was the fifth-most popular payment method Top 1000 retailers accepted in 2021. Digital Commerce 360 tracks payment options retailers’ websites and mobile apps offer.

PayPal was established in 1998 as Confinity and went public through an IPO in 2002. It became a subsidiary of eBay in 2002, and it became an independent company in 2015. Currently, the payments services provider is available in more than 200 countries and regions throughout the world and supports 25 currencies. 

PayPal fifth-most popular payment method with Top 1000 retailers

100% of Top 1000 retailers accept Mastercard and Visa, followed by American Express (97.4%), Discover (93.5%) and PayPal at 82.8%. 

The top 10 merchants offering PayPal at checkout online include: 

• Walmart Inc. (No. 2)
• Apple Inc. (No. 3)
• The Home Depot Inc. (No. 4)
• Target Corp. (No. 5)
• Best Buy Co. Inc. (No. 6)
• Wayfair Inc. (No. 7)
• Nike Inc. (No. 10)
• Lowe’s Cos. Inc. (No. 11)
• Staples Inc. (No. 12)
• Chewy Inc. (No. 14)

76.8% of retail chains offered PayPal in 2021. The top 10 retail chains, companies that sell primarily through physical store and also sell online, in the Top 1000 offering PayPal at checkout include:

• Walmart Inc. 
• The Home Depot Inc. 
• Target Corp. 
• Best Buy Co. Inc. 
• Lowe’s Cos. Inc. 
• Staples Inc. 
• Macy’s Inc. (No. 16)
• The Gap Inc. (No. 19)
• Nordstrom Inc. (No. 20)
• Williams-Sonoma Inc. (No. 22)

PayPal buy-now-pay-later option: Pay in 4 

Pay in 4 is for purchases of $30 to $1,500, which are paid in four interest-free payments, bi-weekly (one payment down and three payments afterward) with 0% APR. PayPal released Pay in 4 in 2020. 

4.3% of Top 1000 retailers offer PayPal Pay in 4. Meanwhile, 6.4% of Top 1000 ranked retail chains offer the BNPL option at checkout.

PayPal to cut 2,000 jobs

The payment pro said it will cut 2,000 staffers as it contends with a macroeconomic slowdown that’s weighed on the firm’s business in recent quarters. The cuts, which will affect about 7% of employees, will take place in the coming weeks, CEO Dan Schulman told employees in a memo.

“While we have made substantial progress in right-sizing our cost structure, and focused our resources on our core strategic priorities, we have more work to do,” Schulman said.

PayPal’s stock has been battered by the slowdown in growth in payments volume on its platform after the pandemic began to recede. In response, the company has vowed to reduce expenses — including through job cuts and the shuttering of offices across the country.

Those moves should have helped the company notch $900 million in savings last year and at least an additional $1.3 billion in 2023, Schulman has said. The 65-year-old CEO has been vocal about his plans to improve his firm’s operating leverage — or the ability to grow revenue faster than expenses.

PayPal — like many other so-called pandemic darlings — saw headcount swell when the virus forced governments around the world to issue lockdown orders, spurring consumers to do more shopping online. Now, as those orders have lifted and supply chains remain under pressure, consumers have returned to in store shopping in droves.

We have updated this story to include the last five paragraphs, which address PayPal job cuts announced in late January. Bloomberg contributed to this story.

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