Fintech has been a multi-year growth story that’s still in its early innings, with Square (SQ) and PayPal (PYPL) leading the pack. Square recently announced a $29 billion, all-stock deal to buy Afterpay, a buy now and pay later platform. Square’s acquisition highlights consumers circumventing traditional credit, especially younger buyers, for installment loans. Payment players and financial technology, notably PayPal, also offer their own version of buy now and pay later. Both Square and PayPal enable businesses with a point of sale, analytics, peer-to-peer payments via Venmo (PayPal) and Cash App (Square), small business lending, cryptocurrency transactions, and support traditional credit card integrations into their platforms. Square and PayPal offer end-to-end financial solutions for businesses and consumers while powering the next generation of financial technology. These financial technology companies are creating additional revenue verticals while addressing unmet needs in the financial services space. Both Square and PayPal may offer long-term growth at reasonable valuations when factoring in their end markets are current growth rates.
Latest Earnings and Growth
The recent earnings reports by Square and PayPal highlight the massive trends and growth trends in the financial technology space. Square’s profit increased 91% from a year ago, which marked a record quarterly growth rate for the payments company. Cash App profit was up 94%, while seller jumped 85% from a year ago. Net revenue excluding bitcoin came in at $1.96 billion for the quarter, an 87% rise year-over-year. PayPal added 11.4 million net new active accounts for a total of 403 million active accounts. Revenue grew 19% year-over-year. Total payment volume grew 40% to $311 billion, while the Venmo app, which began supporting cryptocurrency services in April, saw payment volume grow 58% to $58 billion. Again, these companies are growing rapidly and clearly seeing widespread adoption across their financial solutions with cryptocurrency and buy now-pay later, serving as long-term catalysts. Continue reading "Fintech Duopoly: Square and PayPal"
