Gaming Worth Over $12 Billion to Mobile Payments Powerhouse PayPal

June 4, 2018         By: Steven Anderson

We all know that online gaming is a very big deal these days, with floods of new options in play and more showing up routinely. With the ultimate proof of that last coming soon with E3, new reports out of PayPal demonstrate just how important gaming is to the payments processor, as gaming accounts for over $12 billion in its total worldwide payment volume.

Not only is that a substantial number in its own right, it also represents major gains. It’s up 23 percent over just last year’s figures, and represents income from a staggering number of storefronts. United States gamers made purchases from 26 different storefronts. Russian gamers had 27, and Australian and Canadian gamers both had 28 different storefronts to work with.

The US had about 45 percent of gamers shopping at GameStop, proving that even brick-and-mortar isn’t out of the picture just yet. What’s more, 44 percent were ready to walk away from an ecommerce sale if their preferred payment method wasn’t accepted.

The type of purchase didn’t matter; full game downloads and in-game purchases were almost evenly split, but older gamers—those 35 and older—were much more into in-game spending, putting out an average of $50 per game. Gamers 18-34, meanwhile, only posted an average of $40, and recovered in the full-game download segment with $63 on average compared to older gamers’ $48.

The numbers are stark in their own right—there’s a lot of gaming-related spending going on—but what does it mean? First, it means PayPal has another worthwhile plank in its platform, one that will help it carry on nicely in a post-eBay world, if such a day ever actually arises. Second, it’s also a good sign that eBay probably shouldn’t dump PayPal altogether even if it does go with Adyen; people will walk away from a purchase if their payment method isn’t accepted, and for a lot of people, PayPal is the weapon of choice.

In the end, this is another excellent sign of PayPal’s diversity in income streams, and a sign that it will hold together as a company for quite some time to come. People use PayPal, and the more options PayPal can offer, the more likely it is to remain a major part of the payment landscape.