When visiting Shrewd'm with a laptop, it can be pleasant to hold Command (or Ctrl with Windows) and '+' a few times. The site scales to allow any font size, and the larger font can be pleasant to read even for Shrewds with perfect sight! For luxury Shrewdness, you can combine that with setting the browser to full screen. You'll then find yourself Shrewding a lot.
- Manlobbi
Personal Finance Topics / Macroeconomic Trends and Risks
No. of Recommendations: 19
No. of Recommendations: 5
Do they even *have* a moat? I used them a lot, 15-25 years ago. I've used Venmo for small transactions, almost exclusively, in the last 5ish years. They're playing the myspace to the Facebook of Venmo as I see it - and there are many other such small transaction services. There's nothing unique about this.
No. of Recommendations: 8
We are all clear who owns Venmo, right?
No. of Recommendations: 1
I...am now. And yes, it is eggs on the menu for breakfast.
No. of Recommendations: 4
Sorry, that could have been more constructive. I think this might illuminate a real problem: a lack of differentiation between Venmo and competitors like Zelle or CashApp. And Venmo's performance was one of the less bad parts of the Q4 report. I can't imagine this will be improved by seamless integration with agentic AI, which they're talking about like it's... a good thing?
The day I get a notification that my refrigerator has decided to speculate in EggCoin, I'm unplugging everything.
No. of Recommendations: 2
I think this might illuminate a real problem: a lack of differentiation between Venmo and competitors like Zelle
One distinction in my mind is built-in Zelle for my bank, and scammers use Venmo. Right or wrong that’s how I see it. I think Venmo is still the more popular one, but I’m not convinced it’s superior.
PayPal is such an odd beast to exist in modern times. It filled a need when websites (like eBay primarily) refused to set up normal paying methods. I think I used it in 2003 or so.
No. of Recommendations: 16
PayPal is such an odd beast to exist in modern times. It filled a need when websites (like eBay primarily) refused to set up normal paying methods. I think I used it in 2003 or so.
Is it possible that this is a US perspective? I have no idea about the options to pay there, but what I know: If you live in Germany (maybe it´s the same for Europe in general?) and buy stuff online, whether a car part or a kettle, the 3 standard options every website offers are direct Bank transfer, credit card --- and Paypal:
- Bank transfer takes many clicks and days until the money arrives in the sellers account, a big difference to the US and at least NZ, making this option worthless if impatient or if you need the car part now.
- As most Germans I think twice whom I give my credit card details and therefore don´t use this if not buying regularly from the seller and trusting him.
- So in doubt it´s Paypal.
No. of Recommendations: 1
PayPal pays a dividend who invests with poor capital allocators? Ucmtsu:)
No. of Recommendations: 14
PayPal pays a dividend who invests with poor capital allocators? Ucmtsu:)
Ploink! Into the penalty box you go! A man can only take so much obsessive compulsive behavior.
No. of Recommendations: 2
I don't know about the rest of Europe, but in Portugal I mostly pay for online purchase with my Visa debit card, and bank transfers for larger things. Normally bank transfers complete very rapidly IME (though the backend processing by the recipient to get it through their own systems takes longer, but that would be true of debit purchases as well).
Had an unpleasant surprise yesterday when I went to pay for my PT-US tax service with my Novobanco card, not noticing the service was charging in USD, and got about a 3% hit for international transfer / conversion fees. Though that pales by contrast to what Bessent, Trump, et al have done to the USD-EUR exchange rates in a year, and no sign of stopping.
No. of Recommendations: 0
Ongoing competitive pressure (Apple Pay, Google Wallet, OS wallets), continued market share loss, and execution challenges eg Stripe is growing at 20%
No. of Recommendations: 4
I still use PayPal and have for many years. It works for me, though it sounds like I should look around at alternatives.
I once got scammed on a computer purchase where I payed the culprit via PayPal. It was a fairly clever scam but with the help of our small town post office we figured it out. Sadly law enforcement wouldn't do anything.
The good news is...PayPal totally covered my loss.
No. of Recommendations: 4
PayPal is a service. They have the leading market share in a huge growing segment. Stripe is second with 17%.
Some statistics from Chargeflow:
PayPal has 434 million active users as of December 2024.
10.3 million live websites are reportedly offering PayPal around the world.
PayPal holds a 45% share of the global payments market, making it the #1 payment option in the world.
PayPal scored $1.68 trillion in total payment volume (TPV) in 2024.
PayPal made $31.8 billion in net revenue in 2024.
PayPal has $6.8 billion in free cash flow going into 2025.
PayPal is used in over 200 markets worldwide
https://www.chargeflow.io/blog/paypal-statistics-f...The moat comes from their market penetration. Unless they screw up, they are almost impossible to dislodge. Like AAPL and SIRI.
I don’t own it, but I use it lol.
abromber
