PayPal quarterly revenue rises 16.6 percent

PayPal Holdings Inc reported a 16.6 percent rise in quarterly revenue, in line with analysts' estimates, helped by growth in customer and merchant accounts on its payments platform.

Shares of the payments processor were little changed after the bell on Thursday.

The San Jose, California-based company's active customer accounts rose 10 percent to 197 million, beating research firm FactSet StreetAccount's estimate of 196.5 million.

Total payments volume surged 21.9 percent to $99.35 billion.

The company said it expects first-quarter revenue to be $2.9 billion-$2.95 billion. Analysts on an average were expecting $2.95 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

PayPal has witnessed rapid growth in a number of services such as person-to-person payment app Venmo and Braintree, a payment gateway used by larger merchants, since it was spun off from eBay Inc in 2015.

Payment volumes at Venmo, whose customers are mainly millennials, surged 126 percent to $5.6 billion in the fourth quarter.

Net income rose to $390 million, or 32 cents per share, in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, from $367 million, or 30 cents per share, a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 42 cents per share.

Revenue rose to $2.98 billion from $2.56 billion.

Analysts were expecting 42 cents per share on revenue of $2.98 billion.

(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar and Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)