Small businesses are the heart and engine of our economy. They are drivers of innovation, competition, diversity, economic opportunity, job creation and the overall health of our communities.
PayPal serves 19.5 million businesses, the vast majority of which are small businesses. As part of our efforts to help small businesses grow and thrive, we’re announcing the launch of Funds Now,[1] which gives select businesses access to their completed sales within seconds by eliminating holds, delays and reserves so they can spend their funds immediately.[2]
Over the past year, we’ve been meeting with many small businesses around the country, including during PayPal Small Business Month, to better understand their needs. A common pain point we heard from small businesses was that across the payments industry, it’s too difficult and too slow to get access to the funds from their completed sales. In the world of payments, funding delays of seven to 21 days for small businesses have been far too common. Those funding delays hinder the ability of small businesses to invest back into their businesses, pay their bills, and serve their customers.
With Funds Now, we aspire to set a new expectation in payments - that immediate access to funds should be the norm rather than the exception for small businesses in good standing. In fact, Funds Now has already been extended to more than one million businesses using PayPal at no extra cost. You can learn more about Funds Now here.
Funds Now is just one of many products and services PayPal offers to help small businesses launch, grow and scale. In addition to connecting small businesses to PayPal’s more than 250 million active customer accounts, PayPal also provides financing and credit tools, seller protection and fraud prevention services, the industry leading checkout product and more, including:
The PayPal Business Debit Mastercard® has no annual fee, gives 1% cash back on eligible purchases and enables businesses to withdraw cash from their PayPal balance at the point of sale or at ATMs around the world.
PayPal Working Capital has extended $5 billion in loans to 150,000 unique businesses, and along with PayPal Business Loans, helps businesses launch and grow with fast access to affordable capital. And with PayPal Credit[3], we’re helping businesses extend credit to their customers, driving higher sales and average order values while still getting paid right away.
PayPal Checkout with Smart Payment Buttons™, which we recently launched in the U.S., is designed to help businesses drive conversion. A recent comScore study found that PayPal Checkout[4] converted at 88.7% during checkout -- 82% higher than a checkout without PayPal. With one integration, PayPal Checkout enables businesses to accept all the relevant ways their global customers want to pay, including over 100 currencies, PayPal, Venmo[5], PayPal Credit, credit and debit cards and local alternative payment methods. Importantly, we can dynamically present global consumers with the most relevant payment methods to them without businesses needing to crowd their checkout pages with all the various checkout options.
We also recently made available a new Disputes API, so that businesses can more easily manage and resolve disputes and chargebacks from their customers.
Finally, we do all of this while providing businesses with seller protection[6] and fraud prevention tools. PayPal processes over 10 million payments per day and our fraud tools are designed to get smarter with each transaction. And because PayPal is the most trusted financial brand, customers feel secure shopping and checking out even at new businesses.
Currently, Funds Now is rolling out to select businesses across the US, UK and Australia. We will expand this to more businesses in more markets in the near future, as we work to democratize access to digital commerce tools so that we can help businesses of all sizes grow, in turn, fostering a thriving and diverse retail ecosystem.