- PayPal CEO Alex Chriss released a video yesterday unveiling the company’s six new planned launches for the year.
- PayPal’s new launches include a faster checkout experience, Fastlane, Smart Receipts, advanced offers, CashPass, and updated Venmo business profiles.
- PayPal will release all of these in the U.S. this year and plans to roll them out across the globe in the future.
Yesterday, PayPal released an Apple-like launch video in which the company’s new CEO Alex Chriss unveiled six of the company’s newest initiatives. In the 17-minute video, which has already received 2.1 million views on YouTube, the payments company unveils the six new innovations it plans to bring to market this year.
Here’s a look at what PayPal expects to release this year:
Faster checkout
To help reduce cart abandonment at checkout, PayPal said it will accelerate the checkout process to get customers to choose PayPal and leverage passkeys to enable customers to log in with their face or fingerprint with one tap. The company says that the implementation of biometrics will not only reduce latency by as much as 50%, but it will also enable customers to check out twice as fast.
Fastlane
Fastlane by PayPal is the company’s new, one-click guest checkout tool that PayPal merchant clients can implement into their online checkout flow. When customers are ready to checkout, they are offered the option to save their information with Fastlane to check out in a single tap. With Fastlane, shoppers do not need to remember their username or password, nor do they have to update personal information or share their credit card credentials with each merchant.
PayPal partner BigCommerce has been piloting Fastlane with its merchant customers, and has reported that Fastlane can recognize 70% of guest checkout users.
Smart Receipts
Smart Receipts will leverage AI to help merchants show consumers personalized product suggestions along with a cashback reward offer on the receipt. When a consumer opens their email receipt– which 45% of PayPal customers do– they will see a new product recommendation at the bottom. The offers help merchants open the door to repeat purchases from customers they have already worked hard to acquire.
Advanced offers
Advanced offers shows consumers more relevant ads by showing them products based on the SKU data of their actual purchases, not just their browsing history. The advanced offers capability will also allow merchants to customize the offers. And PayPal will only change merchants based on performance, not just impressions or clicks.
On the consumer side, PayPal’s use of purchasing data means that they will see more relevant offers based on product details such as type and color. The company has also implemented privacy controls that allow users to opt out of data sharing.
CashPass
Launching this March, CashPass will offer consumers personalized cash back offers from top brands. To redeem an offer, users tap on the offer, shop at the business, and check out using PayPal. Shoppers can stack the savings with other rewards, such as the PayPal Cashback Mastercard.
PayPal’s CashPass launch partners include Best Buy, eBay, McDonald’s, Priceline, Ticketmaster, Uber, and Walmart.
Updated Venmo business profiles
Venmo first introduced business profiles in 2021 in an attempt to capture more revenue from small businesses using their personal Venmo account to accept payment. This year, Venmo will enhance business by allowing them to add subscribe buttons, offer promotions to consumers, and show profile rankings.
All of these updates will begin rolling out in the U.S. this year, though PayPal only offered more specific timing on CashPass, which it said will launch this March. The company also made note that it plans to launch all of these features in more geographies at some point.
Founded in 1998, PayPal handles nearly 25 billion transactions a year for nearly 400 million consumer accounts and 35 million merchants in more than 200 markets around the world. Despite the number of announcements, the market is reacting poorly to PayPal’s release this week. At the time of publishing, the company’s stock is down 0.12%.
Photo courtesy PayPal