PayPal Powers Meta Muse Checkout

PayPal is racing to reignite profit growth as its flagship branded checkout slows and rivals muscle in on new digital payment channels. The recent partnership with Meta’s Muse—an AI shopping assistant that searches, fills forms, and checks out on your behalf—could give PayPal a lift if it becomes the default wallet, but it faces tough competition from Stripe, Shopify, and even Amazon, which has already blocked Muse. The stakes? If PayPal ends up just “another button” in a sea of options it doesn’t control, it risks losing its edge in the payment wars.

But there’s a twist: while core checkout stagnates, Venmo is picking up the slack. With total payment volume up 14% and a surge in users combining the Venmo debit card and Pay with Venmo—generating 9x more revenue per account—PayPal is betting big on college partnerships and NIL (name, image, likeness) campaigns. The challenge is keeping student users loyal after graduation and ensuring that marketing spend actually pays off.

Meanwhile, PayPal is flexing its muscle with new launches like BigCommerce Payments in the UK and a $1 billion pilot moving dividends across continents in hours using its own stablecoin, PYUSD. The bottom line: PayPal’s future hinges on whether its new bets can offset sluggish core growth and prove out a real margin story. Based on reporting from The Globe and Mail, American Banker, Crypto Briefing, and Stocktwits.

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