By L. Kalamara
The head of PayPal's central and eastern Europe division reiterated, in an interview with "N" this week, that the worldwide online payments platform records roughly half a million active users in Greece, while the east Mediterranean country has much more room for cash-less transactions.
PayPal Regional general manager Marcin Glogowski also reiterated that the company expects to further expand and strengthen its position in the Greek market next year.
Please tell us about PayPal’s current status in the Greek market. What are your plans and expectations for 2020?
Greece was and still is one of the most important markets for PayPal in Central and Eastern Europe. Only in 2019 we announced peer-to-peer payments, Money Pools that helps collecting funds for common goals such as vacation or weddings, and just today Xoom money transfers, which enables affordable and fast money transfers between borders. It has been some time since a train with the PayPal logo has been riding through the beautiful lands of Greece, but we feel that we have a strong stand in Greece and most certainly expect to strengthen our position in 2020.
How has PayPal affected the evolution and 'revolution' of Greece's e-commerce?
Our goal in Greece and in the region was to make sure we are available to people for both local, as well as cross-border shopping and we have good progress here. Currently, PayPal has over half a million active users in Greece and became domestic payment method for Greek customers - you can now pay in Greece with PayPal for taxi, food delivery, train & airplane tickets, or for your mobile connection. We also support growth of Greek companies selling abroad, providing them with globally trusted payment method with close to 300M active users. We hope to expand our services further - to promote security and trust among Greeks, both domestically and globally
What are the new growing trends and innovations in digital payments? Consumers are becoming more conscious. It’s increasingly important that business leaders find ways to create a clear connection between their company’s values and the value they generate. It has been estimated that the millennial generation will have more buying power than any generation in history, so figuring out how to connect with them, how to attract them and how to keep them is paramount for every company in every industry. It’s important to also continue to appeal to other generations as a majority of Gen X consumers explicitly evaluated company values during a purchase.
Online payment platforms versus traditional banks - What is the Greek market status in this framework and how ready is it to adopt any new practices?
It is probably good to remember that Greece’s economic situation is rather unique – and that of course impacts the popularity of both online payment platforms and traditional banks. According to the last year’s European Central Bank survey, 57% of Greeks are still paid for their work in cash, and 40% of them pay their taxes in cash as well. On the other hand, every fifth Greek e-consumer have and use PayPal, which means that popularity of digital payments is constantly growing. In 2017 there were 1,067.3 M cashless payment transactions in Greece, which ranks it as 18th in European Union. In the same year there were 217,3 M cash withdrawals from ATMs in the country. The volume of the cashless transactions is visibly bigger, which indicates that Greece is on its way to become a less cash society.
What is the role of SMBs in the digital payments’ environment? Do you believe that the new payment tools offer new important opportunities and challenges for SMBs?
Small and medium business in the EU represent 99% of all businesses and employ two-thirds of the workforce. In the past five years, they have created around 85% of new jobs and provided a path to prosperity for millions of families. At the same, many of them don’t have access to the newest solutions and loose to e-commerce giants. That’s where PayPal comes in – our role is to give them secure access to modern tools, without multimillion-dollar investments. According to our internal data, small businesses that collect payments and support their business operations with PayPal are growing more quickly than non-PayPal businesses – PayPal exporters grew at a rate of 14.3% in 2017 compared with just 2% growth for traditional offline businesses in Europe.
We would like to know more about PayPal’s new B2C services. What is next?
Our mission is to democratize financial services to enable as many people and businesses as possible to join and thrive in the digital economy. We are targeting to end 2019 with over 300 million active accounts on our platform and we certainly plan more features to come, so the consumers can pay in an even easier and smoother way. I cannot reveal any specific details currently, but we will definitely announce new services as soon as they come.
What is the Xoom international money transfer service, why is it a significant milestone for the company and what differentiates it from other PayPal services?
To simply put it, Xoom is international money transfer service that allows to quickly send money, pay bills or top up phones to more than 130 markets internationally. Xoom’s launch in Greece and across Europe is another example of PayPal’s mission to make the movement and management of money more convenient, accessible, secure and affordable. We see each transaction via Xoom as a life we’ve collectively helped – there is food on the table, bills paid for, education costs covered. By providing fast and secure payment options for customers to seamlessly send money across borders, PayPal and Xoom are helping to expand and improve the financial health of millions of people worldwide.
Do you have any further plans regarding Xoom’s implementation in the Greek market?
We are constantly working on our services to make them even better for our consumers. I cannot share any details at the moment but if we have something to announce, we will definitely share the news.
Given the large number of Greeks living abroad, could you share with us any useful pieces of advice about using Xoom?
It would be probably good to start with setting up an account on Xoom.com – existing PayPal users can use their account to access Xoom, but you can also make a new one via Xoom iOS or Android application. It’s worth remembering that Xoom customers can send up to 25,000 EUR in a single transaction. It can be sent either to a bank account in EUR or as a transfer to be picked up in cash in six MoneyCenter locations in Greece.
What do you expect from the upcoming special shopping occasions (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas) this year?
I’m certain that we should expect a high shopping fever yet again. We’ve been observing a growing interest in special shopping occasions around the world – in Greece as well. This November on Black Friday, an average Greek plans to spend about 242 EUR per person in online and brick-and-mortar stores, buying 4 products per capita on average. The peak of the shopping activity takes place at midnight – just straight after the launch of the promotions – and later in day, between 2-3 PM. The most popular products are clothes, followed by shoes, electronics, household utilities and cosmetics.
Which are the pros and cons of cross-border trade, along with the relevant European consumers’ payment preferences?
I believe that engaging in cross-border trade opens one to a new digital world full of opportunities. According to our last year’s PayPal x IPSOS survey, 1 in 10 Greeks shop only cross-border already, while over half of the respondents (57%) shop both in domestic and foreign stores. Generally, the top driver for e-shopping abroad is cheapest total cost of the product, including shipping fee (51%), free shipping (49%) and possibility of finding items that are hard to find locally (48%). When it comes to payment preferences – security and speed are the most important factors. In addition, 76% of global consumers would prefer to have the option of paying either in local currency or own currency and 47% not feel comfortable paying in a foreign currency
Online payment fraud incidents may reach high percentages this year and they could even grow more within the next years. What are PayPal’s initiatives about this issue?
We strongly believe that data safety and security must be core to everything we build and maintain. As technological change will continue to impact our lives in profound ways, particularly since we are only just beginning to understand and harness the power of new capabilities, like AI, big data and distributed ledger technology, data security should never be compromised. Our last year’s acquisition of Simility, valued at about 120 million USD, allowed us to widen the scope of our works on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning – they can be used in customer’s service, but also for autonomous infrastructure and autonomous automation. What’s most important, it can be used for better and smarter fighting against fraud.
