$149.7m follower assets
PayPal RBC Conference
Doug Bland (head of PayPal Consumer) interviewed with RBC today. Here were the key highlights:
- Honey has the flexibility to pivot more of its deal generation to non-discretionary goods to foster more consumer value amid generation-high inflation levels and to stay more relevant during these tougher times.
- PayPal has been talking about "doing fewer things better" recently but hasn't offered color on where it would pull back to focus more on things like checkout and the two digital wallets. Doug offered that color today with QR Code being a key area of investment moderation. It still sees a future here, but the short term is less bright than it thought it would be.
- There's a new debit card launch coming in the near future. He wasn't supposed to tell us that but he did by mistake. Much appreciated.
- The decline in Venmo user growth following the abrupt pandemic pull-forward has normalized with user growth "as expected as PayPal laps some numbers."
- Pay with Venmo trends at its "large merchants" (not yet Amazon) are exceeding internal expectations (a cliché but still worth noting). It has been extremely cautious with Venmo monetization to ensure it doesn't turn off its vast and loyal user base (I can relate intimately to this via the path I've chosen with my own newsletter -- but I digress). So far, Venmo has seen no signs of diminishing engagement due to ramping monetization.
I love Honey. Saving money and got close to 100 dollars in gift cards thanks to the pennies.
Who uses QR codes, seriously 🤔
@from100kto1m gaining popularity in restaurants as menu replacements & to order/call for service
@stockmarketnerd when we had covid sure but now, I don’t see restaurants really use it and to me it seems like it’s more Asia specific thing rather then us. I of course could be wrong
@from100kto1m I was in Vegas this past weekend and the coffee shop we went to had a big QR code out front. We went to this entertainment venue and had to scan a QR code to purchase tickets, sign waivers for activities and even for the food/drink menu.
@goodfellasollie that’s interesting, thank you for the info. How easy/natural would you say was it for you to use? 🤔 curious
@from100kto1m I had never used it in that setting before but it was pretty easy to just scan the QR code and then use our phones to do the rest. Saves on paper too so I liked that!
Thank you for putting together these notes. Much appreciated.
Looking to be good, and thanks for reminding me to read this!
@investmenttalk interesting chat & Koyfin had the transcript immediately 🙏🙏🙏
Thanks for sharing these highlights Brad. What are your preliminary thoughts on their plans to launch a debit card ?