Finance – Minh Quang Duong

PayPal made strides towards being a Super App

August 19, 2021by MQDuong1 Comment

PayPal amplified its efforts to become THE Super App for consumers’ financial needs with several big announcements in the past few days.

Giant Eagle enables PayPal and Venmo at all of its 474 stores. This is the first grocery chain in the country that accepts PayPal and Venmo at checkout. To complete an in-store order, users can simply open their PayPal or Venmo app and have the QR code shown in the app scanned by the store cashier. As an incentive to promote the adoption of this feature, PayPal will send $10 in cash back to anyone after they make the first purchase of at least $40 at Giant Eagle
ACI Worldwide partners with PayPal to bring mobile wallet options to ACI’s bill clients. ACI Worldwide is a leading company in real-time digital payments with numerous clients in various industries such as consumer finance, government, education, healthcare, insurance, telephone and cable, and utilities. By virtue of the new collaboration, bill payers can now make payments on ACI’s client platforms through their PayPal or Venmo wallet
Yesterday, Fiserv announced a new feature that enables business-to-consumer payments deposited to PayPal or Venmo accounts. PayPal or Venmo users will be able receive payments from gig economy companies, insurance firms or tax refunds from the federal governments to their PayPal or Venmo account
Last but definitely not least, starting October 1, 2021, the company is going to drop late fees for BNPL customers globally.

PayPal is one of a few companies that are known globally. Anyone that regularly shops online must be familiar with their iconic blue button on online merchants’ checkout page. Strong in processing online payments, PayPal; however, hasn’t been as popular with in-store checkout. Personally, I rarely see a store that accepts PayPal as a payment option. The company is well aware of that weakness and planning to address it. In the very last earnings call, the CEO mentioned that they were going to aggressively go into stores. The partnership with Giant Eagle is proof of that. Even though there are only 474 stores in the chain, this is a great first step. I imagine that PayPal will try to use data acquired from this partnership to demonstrate to prospect partners the benefits of allowing PayPal products at checkout. Plus, grocery is a staple category to consumers. If they are accustomed to checking out with PayPal/Venmo, they will be more likely to use it for other purchases as well.

PayPal has been growing its bill payment service for a while. In the previous earning call, the company cited growing bill payment volume as one of the reasons for its decreasing take-rate. The partnership with ACI Worldwide will likely grow the processing volume yet suppress that take-rate further for the foreseeable future. ACI Worldwide supports around 4,000 customers in the US and according to one study, Americans spends $2.75 trillion a year on recurring bills. Even if this move helps PayPal gain 1% of that volume, that’s another $27.5 billion a year added to the company’s U.S bill payment volume. Given that it processes $350+ billion in a quarter WORLDWIDE for ALL services, I suspect that’s the lift the management will be pleased with. I really like this partnership with ACI. Instead of going out there and going through hoops to work with numerous companies, PayPal can now be available on 4,000 checkout pages in a short amount of time. Bill payments are such a critical function in most adults’ life. Convincing consumers to use PayPal/Venmo to pay bills will create a usage habit that is difficult to break.

Here is PayPal from its 2020 annual report:

Transaction expense is primarily composed of the costs we incur to accept a customer’s funding source of payment. These costs include fees paid to payment processors and other financial institutions to draw funds from a customer’s credit or debit card, bank account, or other funding source they have stored in their digital wallet. Transaction expense also includes fees paid to disbursement partners to enable a transaction. We refer to the allocation of funding sources used by our consumers as our “funding mix.” The cost of funding a transaction with a credit or debit card is generally higher than the cost of funding a transaction from a bank or through internal sources such as a PayPal or Venmo account balance or PayPal Credit.

Hence, the more transactions are funded through bank accounts or PayPal balance, the better it is financially for PayPal. Asking consumers to transfer funds from a checking account to a PayPal/Venmo before making a purchase using that balance is futile. It’s inconvenient and cumbersome. The collaboration with Fiserv helps PayPal go around that challenge. Additionally, having a balance motivates users to be more active. If a friend of mine sends $50 to my PayPal account, I will be more willing to use it for my next purchase than I would without that $50 balance. A few months ago, Square bought the tax business of Credit Karma and integrated it into Cash App. I wrote in my thought on the acquisition

In essence, it benefits Square when customers have balance in their Cash App. The more balance there is, the more useful Cash App is to customers and the more revenue & profit Square can potentially earn. I imagine that once Credit Karma’s tax tool is integrated into Cash App, there will be a function that directs tax returns to customers’ Cash App. When the tax returns are deposited into Cash App, customers can either spend them; which either increases the ecosystem’s value (P2P), or deposit the fund back to their bank accounts. But if customers already direct the tax returns to Cash App in the first place, it’s unlikely the money will be redirected again back to a checking account. As Cash App users become more engaged and active, Square will look more attractive to prospect sellers whose business yield Square a much much higher gross margin than the company’s famous Cash App.

The integration of Credit Karma Tax into Cash App did happen. The same logic can be applied here. In addition to lowering its transaction cost, PayPal benefits in different ways from having more balance in its wallet. Instead of acquiring a tax filing business like Square did with Credit Karma, PayPal collaborates with Fiserv to enable not only tax refunds, but also paycheck deposit or insurance payments. Less capital, more applications. What’s not to like?

The BNPL market is hotter than ever. Recently, Square paid an enormous sum of $29 billion for Afterpay. Merchants are racing to enable the feature due to the fear of missing out. Banks like Citi, Chase or Amex scramble to offer their own BNPL version. Even Apple is rumored to develop its own service for Apple Pay transactions. PayPal launched its PayPal in 4 in August 2020. Since then, the service has processed more than $3.5 billion in transaction volume, $1.5 billion of which took place in the last three months alone. Yesterday, with its policy to drop late fees for consumers, PayPal took a bold step towards gaining more market share in this red hot market.

Let’s talk quickly about how BNPL providers make money. There are some providers like Afterpay or Klarna that allow consumers to break down a purchase into several interest-free payments. To generate revenue, these providers charge consumers a fee for every late payment and merchants a fee that is much higher than the usual interchange rate in exchange for new business. On the other end of the spectrum, there are other companies like Affirm that charge consumers no fees, but levy interest on the purchase. For PayPal, it originally belonged to the first group of BNPL firms that offer interest-free payment plans. As a late comer, PayPal lets merchants use this service at no additional charge, apart from the usual commission rate. Today, to attract the end consumers, PayPal decides to drop late fees, a move that will force other competitors to copy to avoid losing grounds. I expect them to follow suit soon. Late fees only make up 9% of Afterpay’s revenue. The problems for these pure BNPL players are that 1/ they don’t have multiple touchpoints to consumers like PayPal and 2/ they are already not making money. Dropping late fees will make the road to profitability even tougher. For the likes of Affirm, I mean, what can they offer consumers and merchants that PayPal can’t?

All of these developments have one common goal: to make PayPal the go-app application for all things financial for us consumers. Just take a look at the breadth of services that PayPal can offer below. There are few companies that can do the same, let alone having 32 million merchants on the network and a brand name that is widely recognized across the globe.

PayPal's Consumer Services — PayPal’s Consumer Services

I expect in the next few quarters, PayPal will have:

A higher TPV
A lower take-rate due to more bill payments, P2P, especially from Venmo, the drop of BNPL late fees and less reliance on eBay
Higher loss rates
Higher cost of transactions simply because PayPal has to compensate the likes of ACI, Fiserv and Giant Eagle
Higher marketing expense as % of revenue

However, as a shareholder, I can’t help but feel optimistic about the company’s outlook with these moves. I look forward to hearing the management team discuss the ramifications in the future earnings calls.

Business

My notes from 2021 Debit Issuer Study

August 17, 2021by MQDuong1 Comment

Every year, Pulse, a Discover company, publishes a Debit Issuer Study, which covers the debit card landscape in the U.S. This year’s version is the 16th annual edition of the study and comprises of data from 48 financial institutions of different sizes in the country. If you are interested in the payments as well as financial services world, you should have a look at this study. Below are a few things that stood out the most to me, accompanied by some of my own comments

Debit spend per active account increased as growth in ticket size more than offset the decline in transactions

Unsurprisingly, stay-at-home orders last year curtailed debit transactions as stores were closed and folks were forced to remain at home. As a result, 2020 saw a decline of 2.5% in the number of debit transactions, the first contraction of the industry ever. Most of the damage took place in Q1 and especially Q2 before the use of debit cards recovered in the back half of the year. Compared to 2019, last year saw an increase in debit spend per active account, from $12,407 to $13,550. The increase resulted from 10.5% growth in ticket size despite the drop of 1.3% in the number of monthly transactions per active card.

Figure 1 – Annual Spend Per Active Debit Card Increased In 2020 By 9.2%. Source: Pulse

Whether issuers are subject to the regulated interchange cap determines their unit economics

For issuers with $10 billion in assets or more, they are subject to regulations that cap debit interchange rates. Before we move forward, let’s take a step back to revisit what interchange rate is. Every time a transaction takes place, the merchant involved has to pay a small fee to the bank that issues a debit/credit card that the consumer in question uses. The fee is calculated as % of the transaction value and usually determined by networks like Visa, Mastercard, American Express or Discover. In this case, the Federal Government caps the interchange rate for big issuers that have $10 billion+ in assets. According to the 2021 Debit Issuer Study, exempt issuers earned 42.5 cents every transaction, compared to 23.7 cents for regulated issuers. Due to this difference, exempt issuers generated almost twice as big as regulated issuers in annual gross revenue per active debit account ($132 vs $71).

Exempt issuers earn much higher interchange revenue for debit transactions than regulated issuers — Figure 2 – Exempt Issuers Earn 42.5 Cents Per Every Debit Transaction. Source: Pulse

This is one of the reasons why neobanks can offer debit cards with rewards and no fees. Neobanks or challenger banks are usually technology startups working with exempt issuers to offer banking services. The startup in this partnership takes care of the marketing and the product development while the exempt issuer rents out its banking license and deals with all the banking activities such as underwriting, regulatory compliance or settlement. Because the exempt issuer earns higher interchange rates, it can afford to share part of that interchange revenue with its startup partner which, in turn, uses that revenue to fund operations and generate profit. However, I wonder if it’s really fair when a neobank or a financial service company becomes so big while still taking advantage of this “loophole”. Take Square as an example. It’s a $120 billion publicly traded company. It works with Marqeta and by extension Sutton Bank, which is exempted from the regulations over interchange rates, to offer Cash App. Is it truly fair for Square to be able to leverage this loophole when it has a much bigger valuation than many banks with more than $10 billion in assets?

The rise of Card-Not-Present transactions means the rise of fraud threats

When stay-at-home restrictions were in effect, consumers didn’t shop at the stores and instead switched to digital transactions. Consequently, Card-Present (CP) transactions per active card fell by 10% last year. On the other hand, Card-Not-Present (CNP) per active card increased by 23% and made up for one-third of all debit transactions.

Because CNP transactions are less secure than CP ones (due to lack of customer verification), the growth of CNP during the pandemic led to more fraud incidents. CNP and CP with PIN transactions both made up 34% of debit transactions in 2020. However, while the latter made up only 5% of the total fraud claims, the former were responsible for 81% of the claims. Among the CNP fraud claims, 47% were successfully recovered, meaning that consumers had their money back and merchants lost some revenue.

Figure 3 – CNP Saw Many More Fraud Incidents Than CP. Source: Pulse

Whenever a fraud claim happens, it brings an unpleasant experience to both the cardholder and the merchant in question. Hence, issuers may want to focus on ensuring that fraudulent transactions don’t even happen in the first place, especially with CNP.

Contactless and mobile wallet transactions are on the rise

According to the study, contactless is projected to be available on 64% of all debit cards by the end of 2021, up from 30% in 2020, and 94% by 2023. Even though contactless volume grew by 6 times in 2020, it still made up only 1.6% of total debit volume. As consumers become increasingly familiar with contactless and the feature is available on more cards, I expect the share of contactless volume to keep that impressive growth pace for at least a couple of years.

Meanwhile, mobile wallet transactions funded debit cards through three major wallets (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay & Google Pay) reached 2 billion in 2020, around 2.6% of the total debit volume, with the average ticket of $23, up 55% YoY. 57% of this mobile wallet volume were made in-app and the rest took place in stores. If we look at the competition between the aforementioned wallets, Apple Pay is the outstanding performer in every metric. In fact, Apple Pay had an overwhelming 92% share of all mobile wallet transactions using debit cards.

Starting 2022, Visa will put in place new interchange rules that are aimed to encourage more tokenized transactions such as mobile wallets. Hence, I expect that when we read the 2023 edition of this study or beyond, we’ll see a more prominent role of mobile wallet transactions in our society.

Figure 4 – Contactless Volume Grew 6x But Still Made Up 1.6% of Debit Volume. Source: Pulse

Business

Consumers’ Digital Wallets – Where Card Issuers Need To Be

August 1, 2021by MQDuong2 Comments

In this post, I will touch upon digital wallets & checkouts as well as some market movements that make me believe that it will be strategically important for issuers to occupy consumers’ digital wallets.

Fast checkouts and payments are on the rise

Consumers love convenience. Instead of spending time to fill out addresses and credit card credentials, shoppers can finish the job with just a couple clicks. The same goes for in-store check-outs. It’s a far more convenient experience for consumers to hover the phone or a smart watch over a card reader than to drop whatever they are doing with their phone, reach for a wallet and pick out a card. Granted, even though they may not appeal to less tech-savvy shoppers, these fast checkouts, when absent, may be a deal breaker to the more technologically shrewd crowd. I mean, there has to be a reason why many stores accept the likes of Apple Pay or PayPal, despite losing a bit more revenue. Businesses know that by not enabling convenient payments and checkouts, they risk losing a whole lot more.

The more these payment applications are accepted at stores, the more they become useful to consumers and the more consumers they can acquire. The more consumers these wallets acquire, the more they can appeal to stores. The virtuous cycle keeps going. As they become popular, the mobile wallets become something like downtown Manhattan to card issuers. While it doesn’t guarantee success, being present in consumers’ phone and wallets suddenly becomes more critical. Furthermore, there are developments on the market that highlight the importance of this point, starting with Visa.

A new rule from Visa

Per JP Morgan:

In April 2022, Visa will introduce updates to existing domestic interchange programs with categories and rates for card not present Visa EMV token transactions. This includes both network tokenized transactions and digital wallets. With this update, a roughly 10 basis point reduction will apply for many card not present transactions that are Visa EMV tokenized in most segments.
In some cases, interchange rates for non-token transactions will go up, so while the net benefit may not reach 10 basis points, merchants that do not take advantage of the digital wallet incentive will undoubtedly be leaving money on the table. As ecommerce continues to grow, shifts like these to the overall cost of payments will have significant cost implications and influence a merchant’s product development roadmap.

The gist of this news is that Visa will allow merchants to keep more money from mobile wallet transactions but make them pay more whenever customers have to type in their information and card credentials. A few basis points may not sound much, but if your online sales is $1 million/year, the savings can be up to $10,000. Visa is the biggest network out there, accepted in virtually every store around the world. When the new rule comes into effect in 2022, its impact will be wide-ranging. I expect Mastercard to follow suit soon. The question for issuers now becomes: can they sit idly and let their rivals occupy the valuable real estate on our phones?

Apple Pay

Apple Pay is a proprietary mobile wallet by Apple that enables convenient payments by just a phone tap in stores or one click online. The feature is compatible on iPhone 6, all the models that came after and all Apple Watch. That should cover pretty much every iPhone user in the U.S, which makes up 60% of the mobile market domestically. Since its debut in 2014, Apple Pay has grown increasingly popular over the years. As of January 2021, Apple Pay is available in 90% of stores in the U.S and hundreds of websites, including those of major brands. According to the 2020 Debit Issuer report by Pulse, mobile wallet debit payments in the U.S in 2019 by Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Google Pay totaled $1.3 billion, of which $1.1 billion came from Apple Pay. As of this writing, major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, San Francisco & Washington D.C already allow passengers to ride transit with Apple Pay. This kind of integration will only boost its popularity more in the future.

Figure 1 – Apply Pay facilitated most of the mobile payment transactions funded by debit in the U.S in 2019. Source: Pulse

Almost all issuers in the US enable integration of their cards into Apple Pay. American Express lets users who are instantly approved add their cards to Apple Pay immediately. In July 2021, it’s reported that Apple is working on a BNPL service for Apple Pay transactions. Historically, Apple offers a payment plan for its select products & services via Apple Card. Apple Pay Later will allow approved customers to make four interest-free payments due every two weeks or monthly payments at an undisclosed yet interest. Customers can connect their Apple Pay with any card that they want and it’s not required to own an Apple Card. This service will make this mobile wallet even more attractive to customers, though right now whether or when it goes to market remains to be seen.

PayPal

Many people know PayPal as the known P2P platform or that payment option that used to be on eBay. Over the years, PayPal has transformed itself into something much bigger. It now provides a lot of services for both consumers and merchants. No longer restricted to online purchases, consumers can now use PayPal online and in stores with services such as QR Code, mobile wallets, contactless, debit card, credit cards, PayPal Credit and PayPal in 4.

The brand and the scale of PayPal are not to be underestimated. In Q2 FY2021, PayPal processed $311 billion in transactions, almost twice as much as $170 billion in the same quarter two years ago. The company’s YoY growth in transaction volume topped 40% in the last two quarters despite operating at an incredible scale. If you take out eBay, the growth rate was never lower than 45% in 2021. Additionally, there were 403 million active accounts, including 76 million Venmo and 32 million merchant accounts. Venmo’s transaction volume doubled in the last 18 months from $29 billion in Q4 FY2019 to $58 billion in Q2 FY2021. The scale of PayPal is also reflected on how fast they roll out new features. PayPal in 4 was launched in August 2020. Since launch, the service generated $3.5 billion in transaction volume, of which $1.5 billion alone took place in the last three months. Meanwhile, the number of merchants that enabled payments by QR codes leaped from 500,000 in Q3 FY2020 to 1.3 million in the most recent quarter.

On the earning call, the CEO of PayPal highlighted its imminent push into the in-store space.

Clearly, on the branded side, we think we add a tremendous amount of value, things that John talked about, buyer and seller protection, Buy Now, Pay Later at no incremental cost, fraud protection, highest checkout conversion, etc. But we took down rates for basic full-stack processing. That also was reduced somewhat substantially from the 2.9%, plus $0.30 to 2.59%, plus $0.49. And that is going to enable us to aggressively compete for all of the payment processing of the merchants that do business with us.
And you’ve heard us say time and time again, David, that we were going to move into the in-store space. We’re going to move so aggressively in there. We rolled out Zettle in the U.S., is a really beautiful full package. It doesn’t just include card reader but inventory management, sales reads out and allows a merchant to seamlessly load inventory in both their online and in-store locations and then, across multiple channels as well.
And so we’re, obviously, gonna be very aggressive on moving into in-store, and it’s always been part of our strategy. And by the way, if a small merchant does all of their business with us, they can actually see their overall costs come down. And we wanna encourage them to do all of their business with us because we are a trusted platform. They do turn to us, and we price, we think, the right way.
Source: Fool.com

If PayPal successfully becomes one of the de facto checkout methods in stores, given it’s already a popular checkout option online, how would smart issuers ignore the need to get into consumers’ PayPal wallet?

Shop Pay

Shop Pay is the native checkout feature by Shopify. Shopify is an eCommerce platform from Canada. It provides businesses with the tools necessary to build a customized online presence. When merchants list their products on Amazon or Walmart, they just rent a space and have little flexibility for their own branding. Plus, these merchants have to pay numerous fees to the likes of Amazon and Walmart. With Shopify, they pay a monthly subscription and a usage-based fee for some paid services. But stores can keep their own branding and gain more control over their destiny.

Shop Pay works similarly to Apple Pay, PayPal or Visa SRC. Once a credential is stored, customers can use Shop Pay across all stores powered by Shopify. In February 2021, Shopify expanded their checkout feature for the first time to all Shopify-powered stores on Facebook and Instagram. The collaboration was successful that a few months later, they decided to roll out Shop Pay to all merchants on Facebook and Google. This move can bear significant ramifications. Facebook owns the most popular social networks in the world like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Their access to billions of consumers is what retailers want. Google has the dominant market share in search and as a result, a unique access to consumers globally. As these tech giants make a push into eCommerce, Shop Pay will benefit from this partnership and grow even more.

Figure 3 – Shopify’s GMV in Q2 2021 was higher than that of the entire year of 2018. Source: Shopify

Between its launch in 2017 and the end of 2020, Shop Pay facilitated $20 billion in transactions. The cumulative figure increased to $24 billion as of Q1 FY2021 and $30 billion as of Q2 FY2021. As you can see, Shop Pay is growing increasingly fast. The growth of Shop Pay coincides with the growth of Shopify. In the last quarter, Shopify processed more volume than it did in the entire year of 2018. As this company continues to expand and by extension, so does Shop Pay, how long can issuers be absent from this checkout option?

In summary

Engaged customers will add their favorite card to their mobile wallets. The challenge is for issuers that don’t occupy the top-of-wallet position yet. Customers can still rotate cards and choose a certain one at the time of purchase. Hence, being in a customer’s wallet doesn’t mean a card will be used often. Card issuers still need to offer values and work hard to increase engagement. But as the saying goes, you have to be in it to win it.

Tool

Tool: Atom Finance

November 2, 2019by MQDuongLeave a Comment

I recently came across a finance tool that I have been pretty pleased by so far. Credit to Morning Brew newsletter, which introduced the tool. It’s called Atom Finance. It is essentially very similar to Seeking Alpha. As far as I am concerned, Atom Finance can do pretty much what Seeking Alpha does. Below are a few screenshots for your reference

There are three features I particularly like about the tool so far. The first is that in the Financials segment, I can pick and choose variables to show on the interactive bar chart. All I need to do is to click on the variables in the table below the chart.

The other feature I like is the capability to customize peer group, a feature that I believe is currently at an extra cost on Seeking Alpha

The third feature that I appreciate is that I can view earnings call transcripts smoothly from the beginning.

There are usually a few hours between the end of the earnings calls and the transcripts on Seeking Alpha. I haven’t observed how long it takes on Atom Finance, but I will and once I do, I will update this post accordingly.

For now, the tool is free just like Seeking Alpha. It is a handy tool to do research and I personally prefer the User Interace of Atom Finance to that of Seeking Alpha, which I am deeply grateful to for their transcripts. I am by no means affiliated with Atom Finance in any capacity. I am just being reciprocal of their allowing me to use the tool for free.

I hope you will like the tool and if you do, help spread the word to help a young company.