Earnings call

PayPal Holdings, Inc. PayPal Holdings, Inc. · Q2 2026 call

Call heldJul 28, 2026
Time8:00 a.m. Eastern
CEOEnrique Lores

What the CEO argued

Lores used his first full quarter of prepared remarks to argue that PayPal's growth no longer has to come out of the checkout button. He put five changes at the heart of the plan and led with the first of them — financial services across PayPal and Venmo becoming the largest driver of future transaction margin growth — then supplied the number that makes it more than a slogan: financial services is already close to 20% of company transaction margin and growing double digits. The supporting evidence was mostly about depth rather than reach, with active accounts flat at 439 million and the Venmo argument resting on customers who hold both the debit card and Pay with Venmo generating more than nine times the revenue per account of peer-to-peer-only users. He paired that with a cost programme — at least $1.5 billion of gross run-rate savings over two to three years, three organisational layers removed this year — explicitly framed as self-funding the investment rather than dropping to earnings. And he addressed the takeover speculation directly without confirming any of it, saying the board's job is to evaluate every opportunity objectively and that PayPal would consider a path that beat its own plan, while insisting the focus stays on executing that plan.

More from Enrique Lores

What they said

What he says the plan actually changes
At the heart of our plan are five important changes. We are diversifying our business model beyond checkout, with financial services across PayPal and Venmo becoming the largest driver of future transaction margin growth. Expanding into financial services meaningfully increases our addressable market and creates new opportunities for long-term growth.
Enrique Lores · President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, PayPal Holdings, Inc.
The Venmo number that explains the whole strategy
In the second quarter, customers using both the Venmo Debit and Pay with Venmo generated more than nine times higher ARPA than peer-to-peer only users. And this group has roughly doubled in size in the past year.
Enrique Lores · President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, PayPal Holdings, Inc.
What the cost programme is buying, and what it costs
We are making good progress on our plan to deliver at least $1.5 billion of gross run-rate savings over the next two to three years. […] We are on track to remove three organizational layers across the company and increase spans of control this year.
Enrique Lores · President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, PayPal Holdings, Inc.
The takeover speculation, answered without confirming anything
Before I conclude, I want to address the recent M&A speculation regarding the company. I'm sure you can understand as a matter of policy, we don't comment on market speculation or potential M&A discussion. […] At the same time, we remain open and objective in evaluating opportunities. If we see levers or a path that we believe would create superior value for our shareholders than executing our current strategy, we would, of course, carefully consider them.
Enrique Lores · President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, PayPal Holdings, Inc.
The branded-checkout line everyone watches
On a currency-neutral basis, online branded checkout volume growth stabilized at 2% for a second consecutive quarter, while Braintree and Venmo continued to grow in the mid-teens.
Jamie S. Miller · Chief Financial & Operating Officer, PayPal Holdings, Inc. A
The take rate, and why it fell
Transaction take rate declined by 7 basis points to 1.61%. Operationally, this was driven by a combination of factors, including branded co-marketing investments and mix dynamics, including faster Venmo growth.
Jamie S. Miller · Chief Financial & Operating Officer, PayPal Holdings, Inc. A
Why operating expense jumped this quarter
It's important to note that part of the increase is timing, we're investing ahead of cost savings that we expect to become more material in the fourth quarter. These investments include platform and cloud modernization, risk capabilities that improve loss performance, and targeted investments to support our highest priority growth initiatives.
Jamie S. Miller · Chief Financial & Operating Officer, PayPal Holdings, Inc. A
What the balance sheet looked like at the end of it
Moving to capital allocation, in the second quarter, we completed $1.5 billion in share repurchases, bringing the trailing 12-month total to $6 billion. We ended the quarter with $15.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and investments and $13.4 billion in debt.
Jamie S. Miller · Chief Financial & Operating Officer, PayPal Holdings, Inc. A
Where the raised full-year guide lands
We now expect transaction margin dollars to increase to approximately $15.6 billion, or $14.5 billion excluding interest on customer balances. Approximately 7% to 8% growth in non-transaction operating expenses and non-GAAP EPS to increase to $5.38.
Jamie S. Miller · Chief Financial & Operating Officer, PayPal Holdings, Inc. A
The savings already identified, and the charge that comes with them
We have already identified actions to unlock approximately $400 million of new run-rate gross savings by the end of this year, with a portion to be realized in the fourth quarter. While we are still finalizing our plans, this first phase of actions could result in a transformation-related charge of approximately $120 million to $140 million during the second half of 2026.
Jamie S. Miller · Chief Financial & Operating Officer, PayPal Holdings, Inc. A
A named new lending deal, dropped in Q&A
For example, PayPal will be soon launching an integrated consumer lending partnership with Amazon for Germany and Austria. And this is a good example of the type of investments we are going to be making.
Enrique Lores · President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, PayPal Holdings, Inc.
Whether the three businesses stay together
So, where we are today is we are very confident in our ability to grow and expand each of our businesses. We have clear goals for each of them. But at the same time, as a public company, we're open to consider other ways to create and maximize shareholder value, which is really the key goal that we have.
Enrique Lores · President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, PayPal Holdings, Inc.
Europe, and the word she used for what happened there
I guess when I look across all of this, we had grown across in particular Europe at very, very high rates for a long time. And so a lot of what we've seen in the last year really is a more normalization of that growth, but also as we look across the landscape, certainly there's more competitive intensity as well.
Jamie S. Miller · Chief Financial & Operating Officer, PayPal Holdings, Inc. A
How big financial services already is
Today financial services is already a significant part of the transaction margin of the company, close to 20%, and is growing double-digit. And what our strategy is going to do is to accelerate that growth, but this is already a real business for which we have – we see significant demand in the market.
Enrique Lores · President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, PayPal Holdings, Inc.
What an exclusive buy-now-pay-later deal did to one merchant
For example, in a leading fashion retailer where we signed an exclusive BNPL agreement during the last months, we went from a TPV decline in business to close to 10% growth in Q2.
Enrique Lores · President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, PayPal Holdings, Inc.

In the order they were said. Pick a name to read only that speaker.

On the call

  • Operator — Operator
  • Steven Winoker — Chief Investor Relations Officer & Senior Vice President, PayPal Holdings, Inc.
  • Enrique Lores — President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, PayPal Holdings, Inc.
  • Jamie S. Miller — Chief Financial & Operating Officer, PayPal Holdings, Inc.
  • Jason Kupferberg — Analyst, Wells Fargo Securities LLC Q
  • Tien-Tsin Huang — Analyst, JPMorgan Securities LLC Q
  • Daniel R. Perlin — Analyst, RBC Capital Markets LLC Q
  • Sanjay Sakhrani — Analyst, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc. Q
  • Darrin Peller — Analyst, Wolfe Research LLC Q
  • Bryan Keane — Analyst, Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. Q
  • Timothy E. Chiodo — Analyst, UBS Securities LLC Q
  • Ramsey El-Assal — Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. Q

About these quotes

Every passage above is quoted verbatim from PayPal Holdings, Inc.'s Q2 2026 earnings call of Jul 28, 2026, checked against the recording's transcription word for word. PayPal's second-quarter call is the company's own event, and the corrected text worked from here is FactSet CallStreet's transcription of the recording, which PayPal posts on its investor relations site. This page quotes from the call rather than reproducing it. The archived webcast, the earnings release and the slide presentation that accompanied the call are all available from investor.pypl.com. Figures spoken on a call are management's own and are checked against the release before they are used anywhere else on this site.

WebcastListen to the call at PayPal Holdings, Inc. investor relationsThe company's own replay — the authoritative record ReleaseQ2 2026 results press releaseWhere every figure quoted here is verified NumbersQ2 2026 earnings pageThe reported figure set, Rule of 40 score and consensus comparison