"We know who buys the products and where": PayPal plans advertising network

Payment giant PayPal is planning an advertising network that will use its own customers' data. The platform should help merchants to sell more goods and customers to "discover more of what they love", according to PayPal. According to the press release, former Uber manager Mark Grether was hired to develop the new business area. He previously headed up a similar division at the transportation brokerage service.

As a payment service, PayPal has data on individual product purchases and should also have a good view of the general spending behavior of its users – a valuable treasure trove of data for personalized ads. "If you buy products on the Internet, we know who buys the products and where, and we can use the data," Grether told the Wall Street Journal.

In Germany too?

According to the report, users in the USA would have to take action themselves and opt out of the use of their data, otherwise they would provide raw material for the advertising platform. According to the report, PayPal is planning to sell ads in its own services as well as selling data to external advertising companies that use customer information to display ads on other services.

Overall, the advertising platform is probably still at an early stage. It is still uncertain whether the advertising service will find its way to Germany and Europe at all. However, the company should undoubtedly have the necessary data in Germany, as PayPal is a dominant player in the online payment market. According to the company, there are 35 million active customer accounts in Germany alone, which includes merchants and consumers as well as users of the Xoom money sending service. PayPal has over 400 million users worldwide.

At present, the data of existing customers in Germany is only used for internal marketing purposes and is not sold externally to advertisers, a PayPal spokesperson explained in response to an inquiry from the iX editorial team.

(axk)