PayPal Shares Rise on Positive Venmo News

Shares of PayPal Holdings were slightly on the rise after the company announced that its Venmo money-transfer service would launch a credit card next year.

PayPal, which obtained the Venmo app in 2013, will partner with Synchrony Financial to make the move happen.

Synchrony bought PayPal’s U.S. consumer credit business for $5.8 billion in early 2018. The Venmo credit card will be available in the second half of 2020, PayPal said.

“We are pleased to deepen our relationship with Synchrony to bring groundbreaking new credit experiences to the Venmo community through a desirable credit card and a seamless in-app experience,” PayPal Chief Executive Dan Schulman stated.

“The next natural extension was to have a Venmo credit card,” Darrell Esch, senior vice president of credit at PayPal, told CNBC. “This rounds out what was otherwise a gap with the debit card.”

“This is going to a big partnership for us — we know that Venmo is a growing customer base,” Synchrony CEO Margaret Keane told CNBC. “This sets us up as a company that can demonstrate digital savviness and innovation and at the same time, and leverage things we’ve done in the past, like managing the relationship with a partnership and building out great analytics.”

It was this past April that PayPal disclosed on an earnings call that for the first time that Venmo has more than 40 million users.

Shares of PayPal edged up 0.5% to close at 103.63 on Thursday.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Paypal Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) and have not been compensated for this article.