EBay Inc. is looking at ways it can bring Venmo's mobile person-to-person payment method and the Venmo Touch mobile purchasing system into PayPal's ecosystem, eBay executives said in a conference call to discuss first-quarter earnings.
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Venmo's P2P product "has seen explosive growth on college campuses," said John Donahoe, eBay's CEO during the conference call. While Venmo doesn't have any revenue for the time being, the platform extends PaylPal's reach, he said.
"Over time, you'll see us evolve those two together," he said.
On the other side Vemno Touch, which allows consumers to authorize mobile payments within one app and extend that authentication to other apps on the same device, will likely also be combined with PayPal in the future, said Donahoe.
We want to "get PayPal out to where the action is," Donahoe said. EBay believes there's a window of opportunity to make PayPal the No. 1 payment platform, he said.
While eBay hasn't invested in much marketing for PayPal in the past, Donahoe said a brand campaign is coming soon, using digital marketing channels and select TV advertisements.
Revenue for eBay for the first quarter of 2014, ending March 31, increased to $4.3 billion, a 14% spike. It had a net loss of $2.3 billion, down from a profit of $677 million a year earlier, due to a discreet tax charge of about $3 billion.
EBay's total company enabled commerce increased 24%, to $58 billion, and its mobile enabled commerce volume rose 70%, to $11 billion, which represents 19% of the volume.
Total payment volume at PayPal grew 27%. PayPal now has 148 million active registered accounts, with 5.8 million new accounts coming in the first quarter. Its revenue increased to $1.8 billion.
