Cryptocurrency most mentioned topic among influencer discussions

PayPal Holdings, Inc. (PayPal) launched a new service in October 2020 enabling customers to buy, hold and sell bitcoin and other virtual coins (cryptocurrencies) at the 26 million merchants on its network, as migration towards digital payments continues to accelerate driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. Against this backdrop, cryptocurrency emerged as the most popular topic among influencer discussions on Twitter, finds GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

An analysis of GlobalData’s PayPal Holdings Inc Influencer Platform reveals that influencer conversations related to PayPal surged by 500% quarter-on-quarter in Q4 2020.

Smitarani Tripathy, Influencer Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “In October, there was a dramatic rise in influencer conversations around PayPal, when the online payments company received the conditional Bitlicense from New York State’s Department of Financial Services (DFS). The license allows PayPal’s users in the US to buy, sell and hold various cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum and litecoin through PayPal digital wallet. PayPal will be providing the service in partnership with Paxos Trust Company, LLC (Paxos). The service was originally supposed to be launched from early 2021. However, the company advanced it to November 2020. This led to a conversation spike in November.”

Another spike was noticed in November, when the company reported a revenue of US$5.46bn for the quarter ended September 2020, a growth of 25% compared to the same period in previous year. The Q3 showcased one of the strongest earnings results for the company. Total payment volume also surged by 36% Y-o-Y to US$247bn.

In December, another spike in influencer conversation was noticed, when Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of India imposed a fine of US$130,212 on PayPal as the company failed to comply with anti-money laundering (AML) rules. One of the key charges against the company was that it did not register itself as a ‘reporting entity’ as mandated under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).