PayPal announces European account milestone

A recent press release from PayPal announced it has reached an all time high of 35 million European accounts. They do not, however, clarify whether the figure relates to total, or active, accounts. Earlier this year only 37.6 million PayPal accounts, out of a global total of 133 million, were active. Nevertheless, the online payment company claimed that the milestone “demonstrates the growing popularity of PayPal among internet consumers and merchants across Europe.”

PayPal processed $8.4 billion in European payments in 2006, and thousands of businesses use the online payment method. Its rival, Google’s Checkout, still trails in awareness and PayPal remains the preferred method for merchants across Europe, including Harrods, Boots and DHL.

Google Checkout's lack of success has been blamed, in part, on merchant's privacy concerns. E-consultancy reports on a 2006 study by Piper Jaffrey which cited that merchants were worried about “the perception that Checkout provides Google with too much visibility into their business, especially relating to Google search driven conversion rates”.

At the end of last year, PayPal reported it had 86 million registered users in the U.S. and 47 million elsewhere in the world, and had handled $37.8 billion in sales.

Tags: Google Checkout, online payments, PayPal