PayPal reported third quarter 2026 net revenue of $8.6 billion on October 27, 2026, up 2 percent from a year earlier, and raised its full-year adjusted earnings outlook even as quarterly revenue came in below what analysts had penciled in. GAAP diluted earnings per share fell 4 percent to $1.25, while non-GAAP earnings per share rose 8 percent to $1.45. The figures are from PayPal's own earnings release, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A mixed quarter under a new chief executive

This was one of the first full quarters under Enrique Lores, who became PayPal's president and chief executive on March 1, 2026, succeeding Alex Chriss. Lores came from Hewlett-Packard, where he had been chief executive, and PayPal's board brought him in after a stretch of slowing growth in the company's core branded checkout.

The headline tension in the result is the gap between the top line and the bottom line. Net revenue of $8.6 billion grew just 2 percent, 1 percent on a currency-neutral basis, the slowest quarterly pace this year. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.45, up 8 percent, grew far faster. The explanation is largely the share count: PayPal's diluted share count fell to 858 million, down from roughly 960 million a year earlier, as the company bought back stock. Fewer shares spread the same profit across a smaller base, which lifts the per-share figure.

The volume and the accounts

Total payment volume, the dollar value of payments processed across PayPal, Venmo and Braintree, reached $487.1 billion, up 6 percent, or 7 percent on a currency-neutral basis. Volume growing faster than revenue is a long-running feature of PayPal's business, because a rising share of what it processes comes from lower-margin unbranded processing through Braintree rather than the higher-margin branded checkout button consumers recognize.

Active accounts stood at 440 million, up 0.6 percent from a year earlier. That is close to flat, and it is the number that has worried investors most: PayPal's growth increasingly depends on getting more activity and more revenue from existing users rather than adding large numbers of new ones. Transaction margin dollars, the measure management treats as the truest read on the core business, were $4.0 billion, up 2 percent.

The split by geography was uneven. U.S. revenue grew about 5 percent while international revenue declined about 2 percent, according to coverage of the release, a reversal of the pattern at many global companies this year.

It helps to know what sits inside that total payment volume. PayPal processes money three main ways: the branded checkout button that consumers recognize and that carries the highest margin; Braintree, the behind-the-scenes processing it does for other companies at a lower margin; and Venmo, its peer-to-peer app, which it has been working to turn into a bigger revenue source through its debit card and business tools. When volume grows faster than revenue, it usually means the lower-margin processing is growing faster than the branded button, which is the long-running squeeze on PayPal's mix.

Why the guidance went up

PayPal raised its full-year 2026 adjusted earnings per share outlook to about $5.60, from the roughly $5.38 it guided to in July 2026. It reaffirmed its full-year GAAP earnings per share at about $5.07, a mid-single-digit decline from the prior year. For the fourth quarter, PayPal guided to non-GAAP earnings per share of about $1.43.

It is worth being precise about what a raised outlook is and is not. This is the company's own forecast of its own results, reported here as PayPal's stated guidance, not a prediction by this publication and not a judgment on the stock. Much of the lift in the full-year figure traces to the same mechanics visible in the quarter: cost discipline and a shrinking share count doing more of the work than revenue acceleration.

What this says about PayPal's problem

PayPal still moves an enormous amount of money and prints billions in quarterly profit. The question hanging over it is growth, specifically whether branded checkout, the familiar yellow button, can grow again in a market where Apple Pay, Shop Pay and others compete for the same checkout screen, and where buy now, pay later options crowd the same space.

The Q3 result is consistent with a company managing the transition carefully: protect the profit, return cash to shareholders, keep volume growing through processing, and try to re-accelerate the higher-margin consumer business. For an understanding of where PayPal sits in the wider payments landscape, our explainer on what fintech is sets out the terrain.

How to read the release yourself

The primary document is PayPal's 8-K earnings release on the SEC's EDGAR system. The figures that carry the most information are transaction margin dollars, active accounts and the currency-neutral revenue growth, because together they show whether the core consumer business is growing on its own rather than being flattered by buybacks. The guidance change is informative too, but as the company's own outlook, not an independent forecast.

Enrique Lores, PayPal's president and chief executive, framed the quarter as early evidence that the company's strategy is reaching its results. The numbers underneath that framing, flat accounts, slow revenue, faster per-share earnings, are the real content of the quarter.

What to watch next

The next checkpoints are whether active accounts return to meaningful growth, whether branded checkout volume re-accelerates, and whether transaction margin dollars can grow faster than the low-single-digit pace of this quarter. Those are the lines that would show the core business turning, as opposed to the per-share figure being supported by a smaller share count.