PayPal’s payment volume grew faster than revenue as Venmo notched a seventh straight strong quarter

PayPal reported second-quarter 2026 net revenue of $8.68 billion, up 5% from a year earlier, on total payment volume of $486.4 billion — a 10% increase — across 439 million active accounts. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $1.38, and the company raised its full-year guidance to approximately $15.6 billion in transaction margin dollars and about $5.38 in non-GAAP EPS.

The gap between payment-volume growth (10%) and revenue growth (5%) is the number to sit with. It reflects a persistent industry dynamic: as more volume flows through lower-take-rate channels — unbranded processing through Braintree, and person-to-person transfers — the dollars moved grow faster than the revenue PayPal keeps on them. Transaction margin dollars, the metric management steers by, rose just 1% (3% excluding interest on customer balances), underscoring that PayPal’s challenge is less about moving more money and more about defending the profitability of each dollar it moves.

Venmo was the brighter spot. Its total payment volume grew 14% year over year, a seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, and PayPal has spent recent years trying to convert Venmo’s large, engaged user base from a free peer-to-peer utility into a revenue contributor through its debit card, pay-with-Venmo checkout and instant-transfer fees. Sustained double-digit volume growth is the precondition for that monetization to matter at scale.

PayPal operates in an increasingly crowded payments field, pressed on one side by Apple Pay and bank-backed wallets and on the other by processors like Block and Stripe. Raising full-year profit guidance signals management’s confidence in its margin trajectory even as headline revenue growth stays in the mid-single digits — but guidance is a forecast, not a result, and the durability of PayPal’s branded checkout against native wallet buttons remains the strategic question the market keeps returning to.