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Is PayPal Down? Outages Reported by Users

Is PayPal Down? Outages Reported by Users

Newsweek2 days ago
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
PayPal users reported issues with the money transfer service on Friday morning.
Tracking site DownDetector reported a spike of more than 700 outages from about 9 am ET.
PayPal is one of the most widely used financial apps in the U.S., logging over 400 million active users last year.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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I joined a class-action lawsuit and was surprisingly awarded $28,000. It didn't change my life, but it changed my mindset.
I joined a class-action lawsuit and was surprisingly awarded $28,000. It didn't change my life, but it changed my mindset.

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I joined a class-action lawsuit and was surprisingly awarded $28,000. It didn't change my life, but it changed my mindset.

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Business Technology News: PayPal Opens Bitcoin And Crypto Payments To US Merchants
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Business Technology News: PayPal Opens Bitcoin And Crypto Payments To US Merchants

Here are five things in tech that happened this week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them? This Week in Business Technology News Business Technology News #1 – PayPal opens bitcoin and crypto payments to US merchants. PayPal has launched a new feature called 'Pay with Crypto', allowing U.S. merchants to accept payments in over 100 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. For the first year, merchants pay a promotional fee of $0.99 per transaction, then 1.5 percent thereafter. Customers pay with crypto via wallets like Coinbase or MetaMask. PayPal converts the crypto into its stablecoin PYUSD, then into U.S. dollars for the merchant This move follows the launch of PayPal World – a global partnership connecting major digital wallets. PayPal president and CEO Alex Chriss said, 'These innovations don't just simplify payments – they drive merchant growth, expand consumer choice, and reduce costs.' (Source: Bitcoin Magazine) Why this is important for your business: Can we agree that cryptocurrency is becoming a real currency? It's been around now for years and has grown not only in popularity but stability. The President has his own meme coin for goodness sake! Where is this heading? For me, it's obvious. More consumers will be using crypto in the not-too-distant future for their daily transactions in lieu of options in order to avoid fees. And more merchants will encourage the use for this reason. PayPal, a respected brand in the financial services space, is jumping ahead of this. It's a big step forward. Business Technology News #2 – HubSpot launches the first CRM connector for Anthropic's Claude. HubSpot has officially launched its first CRM connector for Anthropic's Claude, bringing real-time customer context into the AI assistant to supercharge business workflows. Teams can ask questions in plain language about their CRM data and Claude can generate tailored answers/summaries based on each team's unique context in HubSpot. For example, marketing teams can ask Claude to locate a contact who opened an email campaign but didn't click through. Sales teams can request a summary of active deals by name and amount. Visualizations like charts and graphs can be generated for further analysis. Users only see CRM data they're authorized to access. The CRM connector is available to all HubSpot customers with a paid Claude subscription. (Source: MarTech Cube) Why this is important for your business: Make no mistake: this is a reporting tool. And that's a good thing. Enabling users to do more natural language queries of their data and get quick, intelligent responses has long been an unreachable goal for many CRM administrators. For now at least, nothing is being done with this data other than displaying it on demand for users. I'm hoping as integrations like these evolve, more agentic AI options will appear. Business Technology News #3 – Amazon pulls out of Google Shopping ads. Amazon has made a dramatic global retreat from Google Shopping ad auctions, ending its participation across 20 international domains. This sudden move is shaking up the digital advertising landscape. In just days, Amazon went from appearing in 30 percent of Shopping auctions to zero – affecting millions of impressions. Experts call the shift 'colossal,' likening it to Amazon's pandemic-era ad pullback. Many of speculated on what's behind this decision suggesting Amazon is shifting toward its own ecosystem, or this was a strategic pause after Prime Day. It remains to be seen if this is temporary or a long-term strategy shift, but Amazon's disappearance is reshaping ad dynamics – giving competitors a rare chance to shine. (Source: Search Engine Land) Why this is important for your business: I'm not so surprised. 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With fewer barriers, mom-and-pop shops might afford AI tools that were once reserved for enterprise giants. However fewer rules mean more risks and small businesses must vet tools carefully for security, reliability, and ethics. Trump's action plan is a significant opportunity for startups who offer AI solutions like chatbots and marketing automation. To stay ahead, small businesses should train their teams of basic AI literacy and AI tools that are tailored to their industry. (Source: Times Square Chronicles) Why this is important for your business: One other thing: until this legislation appeared many states were taking it upon themselves to regulate the use of AI and my expectation is that activity will also decline. On the one hand, various rules from all over place would create more complications for businesses using AI. On the other hand, AI is scary. 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PayPal Stock Dropped 9% After Earnings. Is it a Red Flag, or a Buying Opportunity?
PayPal Stock Dropped 9% After Earnings. Is it a Red Flag, or a Buying Opportunity?

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PayPal Stock Dropped 9% After Earnings. Is it a Red Flag, or a Buying Opportunity?

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But is the drop in PayPal stock's price a buying opportunity? That's a question worth exploring. What's going right for PayPal PayPal is a low-growth business at this point with just 5% Q2 revenue growth. Active accounts were only up by 2%. But the company is turning some heads when it comes to profitability. When PayPal hired Chief Executive Officer Alex Chriss in 2023, he immediately took notice of the company's transaction margin. To win large accounts, the company had lowered its prices, particularly when it was working behind the scenes with unbranded checkouts. PayPal has renegotiated some of its top contracts since Chriss' arrival, and it's lifted how much profit it makes per transaction. In Q2, the company's transaction margin dollars increased by 7%, which was notably ahead of its 5% revenue growth. When it comes to the bottom line, it gets even better for PayPal. Management has aggressively bought back stock with its profits, lowering the share count and consequently boosting its earnings per share (EPS). Q2 EPS was up 20% year over year, which is something that shareholders love to see. Since early 2022, the share count for PayPal has steadily dropped, as the chart below shows. There are some caution flags out PayPal stock dropped 9% after earnings, as mentioned. It's also down 23% from 52-week highs, as of this writing. So, investors want to know if this pullback is a buying opportunity. After considering what's going right, some may be inclined to believe that it is indeed an opportunity. There is more to consider, however. First and foremost, PayPal's user growth has stalled. Active accounts were only up 2% in Q2. But more troubling was the 4% drop in transactions per active account on a trailing-12-month basis. The downward trend started in the first quarter, when transactions per account had dropped by 1% (after years of increases), but it looks like it's picking up steam now. With account growth stalling and transactions dropping, PayPal doesn't offer much to investors when it comes to revenue growth. That's why these are caution flags -- stocks that outperform the S&P 500 usually have above-average top-line growth. What's the verdict? While PayPal's recent growth leaves a lot to be desired, better growth could be around the corner. For starters, PayPal owns Venmo, and it accounts for 18% of the company's total payment volume -- a meaningful amount. Venmo's growth has accelerated in recent quarters. In the second quarter of 2024, Venmo's volume was only up 8% but it was up by 12% in Q2. This acceleration is promising. Moreover, PayPal just announced PayPal World, a partnership that will allow for interoperability with major digital wallets worldwide. Early joiners include Latin America's MercadoLibre and China's Tencent. This partnership could boost PayPal's adoption, but investors won't know for sure until after it officially launches this fall. For me, the verdict is that PayPal stock is a buy, with a caveat. The caveat is that I don't believe the company's current growth can lift the stock above the S&P 500 over the next five years. Shareholders need some of its growth initiatives to pay off. However, PayPal stock is low-risk. Its scale is vast, it's generating substantial free cash flow, and it's boosting shareholder value with stock buybacks. Even if growth continues to sputter, the company's EPS should increase modestly, lifting the shares. Because PayPal stock is down significantly from its 52-week high, there's a margin of safety with this investment. In conclusion, if things go as they are now, there may be little downside for investors. And if things get better due to things such as Venmo's growth, then it could be a market-beating investment. Should you invest $1,000 in PayPal right now? Before you buy stock in PayPal, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and PayPal wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $625,254!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,090,257!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,036% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 181% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 29, 2025 Jon Quast has positions in MercadoLibre. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends MercadoLibre, PayPal, and Tencent. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $42.50 calls on PayPal and short September 2025 $77.50 calls on PayPal. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. PayPal Stock Dropped 9% After Earnings. Is it a Red Flag, or a Buying Opportunity? was originally published by The Motley Fool

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