PayPal Debuts Credit Card Targeting Brick-and-Mortar Stores

PayPal is turning to its old nemesis, plastic, to help it expand beyond the digital realm, according to Bloomberg.

The online payments venture is introducing a credit card that offers customers 2 percent cash back on purchases, one of the industry’s highest rebate rates, with no annual fee. The rewards will appear in users’ online wallets and can be spent immediately on additional PayPal purchases or transferred to a bank.

The move is part of CEO Dan Schulman’s effort to transform PayPal from a payments button on websites into a versatile financial tool for everyday use, even in brick-and-mortar stores. He’s forged 24 deals over the past 18 months with technology and financial companies including Apple, Visa and JPMorgan Chase, looking to make PayPal ubiquitous in the lives of its 210 million customers. The company already tested the card with some of them.

“Not only are they using us to shop outside of PayPal in the physical world, but they’re also shopping more on PayPal with this card,“ said Darrell Esch, chief commercial officer for global credit at the company. Some customers began checking the balance in their digital wallets more often, leading to additional shopping online. By the end of June, before the card’s full rollout, transactions per PayPal account rose 10 percent to 32.3 over the trailing 12 months, according to a statement from the company.

The new card is essentially in-line with PayPal’s ongoing strategy of providing account holders with multiple avenues for product purchases, money transfer as well as for paying bills. This strategy has been translating into increases in account-usage frequency as well as in average ticket price.

Among credit-card enticements, cash-back remains king. Almost 70 percent of consumers say their favorite rewards card offers such rebates, according to a June survey by card processor Total System Services. PayPal is working with Mastercard and lender Synchrony Financial, the largest issuer of private-label credit cards, on its offer.