PayPal is now one of the most popular online payment services. But what data flows when you pay online with PayPal and Co.?
In Germany PayPal is the most popular service providers for online payments. Every fourth euro Germans spent online trading with PayPal in 2023. The payment service is also successful worldwide.
In the first quarter of this year alone, the group achieved sales of just under $7.7 billion generate. PayPal thus achieved a whopping nine percent increase compared to the same quarter last year.
But a transaction with PayPal etc. on the Internet doesn’t just involve a lot of money. A lot of personal data is also on the way.
How much data flows through PayPal and Co.?
PayPal also makes money by passing on data. Who the group passes on its data to must be disclosed in accordance with the provisions of Luxembourg banking law. Because PayPal works with a Luxembourg banking license.
The list of companies with which PayPal shares its data is quite long. Around 1,000 companies that receive data from the payment service can be found on 46 pages.
The group divides these into various categories such as payment providers, credit reporting agencies and fraud prevention services as well as financial products, business partnerships or marketing and public relations.
The countries of the respective partners are also listed. For example, user data flows to Great Britain, France, Australia or the USA.
But Russia and China can also be found in this overview. For example, LLC Havas Digital, the Russian subsidiary of a French advertising company, or Cheetah Mobile Inc. are listed here.
But well-known tech companies also receive data from PayPal for personalized advertising. For example Twitter, Yahoo or Facebook.
What information does the group pass on?
The company also has to disclose the type of data that PayPal passes on. This list is also quite long and extensive.
It ranges from name, address and email address to the IDs of cookies, ads and devices. But the type of PayPal services used and other transaction information also flow from PayPal.
According to the Data protection PayPal’s derivation of personal data is intended, among other things, to protect users’ accounts and “to protect them from fraud when using the services”.
The derived data may include, for example, behavioral patterns and personal preferences, browsing and purchasing habits, and your creditworthiness.
But of course that is not the only goal. According to its data protection declaration, Paypal also creates profiles for its users. In addition to behavioral patterns, these also include personal preferences or gender, income, surfing and purchasing habits and creditworthiness.
What about other payment services?
But PayPal is not alone in this approach. The popular payment services Visa and Mastercard are also involved in the data business.
Visa, for example, collects data according to the Data protection among other things for advertising purposes. This includes data such as locations, but also biometric data.
Visa also creates larger data sets from additional personal data to advise companies. However, the group does not specify what data this involves.
Mastercard has gone a step further and “acquired a few analytics companies,” according to marketing chief Raja Rajamannar in an interview explained. This allows the payment service to analyze real-time data and “identify what works and what doesn’t.”
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The article PayPal and Co: You reveal this data when you pay online by Maria Gramsch first appeared on BASIC thinking. Follow us too Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.