Skype and PayPal were big drivers of revenue growth for eBay, though profits at the company were down:
“Year-over-year revenue growth was driven primarily by the continued growth in PayPal, Skype, the company’s classifieds business as well as growth in eBay’s fixed-price format” according to eBay.
Skype is being sold, though eBay will retain a significant minority interest in the company. Skype has 521 million users globally and reported $185.2 million for the quarter. PayPal did very well itself:
Revenue for the unit was up 15% to $688.1 million — making up a little more than 30% of total revenue for the quarter. Active registered accounts grew 19% to 78 million, the company said.
And VentureBeat reports from Web2.0 on PayPal’s big new push with an API and also an emphasis on mobile:
“PayPal will be the first truly global online payment service to open its platform to everyone,” said president Scott Thompson, speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit today in San Francisco. “We’ll be releasing APIs that will allow anyone in the industry to create new ways to reinvent the $30 trillion payments industry.”
He showed off a concept video of people buying movie tickets through street advertising or their refrigerators, which detected whether they were low on milk or sugar. More immediately, he envisioned applications that could be built into televisions, mobile phones or social networks.
Despite the fact that there are a wide range of competitors already in the segment, because of its brand, installed user base and resources, PayPal could “own” mobile payments in the US at least. Only a brand like Visa has an equal capacity to attract consumers. We’re about to see mobile payments — or online transactions facilitated via mobile devices — start to become a much more mainstream phenomenon in the US in 2010.
With mobile payments there are three scenarios:
- Payment with a mobile phone that shows up on a carrier bill (e.g., Zong)
- Using a mobile phone to access an online payments system or stored credit card (e.g., Amazon, PayPal)
- A mobile payments platform or system that acts like a credit card and transmits some account (credit card, checking account) info to the seller.