PayPal more than triples profit to €23.2m in Ireland

Profit at PayPal’s Irish arm more than tripled to €23.17 million last year in results the directors said were “in line with expectations”.

Recently filed accounts for the Irish unit of online payments giant PayPal show that profit before tax rose more than 3½ times from the €6.49 million recorded in 2017.

The accounts for the 2018 financial year also show sales rose 7.9 per cent to €206.8 million.

PayPal Europe Services Ltd provides customer support, risk operations and corporate administrative services to the wider group.

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“The directors are satisfied with the performance of the company, which is broadly in line with expectations. Increased revenues in 2018 reflects an increase in activity carried out by the company,” a note in the accounts said.

The unit, ultimately owned by US-incorporated PayPal Holdings Inc, also said it continued its relationship with IDA Ireland in the year to "further develop operations" here.

Since establishing its operations here, PayPal has become one the largest multinational employers in the country. It employed 2,450 staff in the year, up slightly on the previous year. The majority of those were in customer support roles and “general and administrative” roles.

Salaries and redundancies

PayPal paid out €95.1 million in salary costs during the year, a 3.3 per cent rise on the previous year. It also had redundancy costs of €1.34 million.

The company, founded in 1998, enables individuals and businesses to send and receive payments online. It had 267 million active customer accounts at the end of 2018 and recorded revenues of $15.45 billion (€14.05 billion) last year as it processed 9.9 billion payment transactions.

PayPal has two sites in the Republic, one in Dublin and the other in Dundalk. The company’s European headquarters is in Luxembourg.

EBay spun off PayPal in 2015, having acquired the company for $1.2 billion in October 2002.