PayPal’s acquisition of money transfer company Xoom is now complete. In a post on PayPal’s website, CEO Dan Shulman welcomed Xoom to “the PayPal family”.
In so doing, Shulman noted that the global remittances market sees about $600 billion transferred every year, but asserted that the archaic cash-based means by which that money is sent “can be time-consuming, insecure and expensive.” The implication, of course, is that with Xoom’s help, PayPal is going to re-energize global remittances by ushering it into the digital payments revolution – and it has the means to do it, at least in the area of technology and increasingly in the area of global infrastructure.
Of course, the Xoom acquisition is just one prong in PayPal’s overall approach, with the company having started to explore various other digital payment avenues including mobile payments and even online gambling. But the remittances prong is a sharp one: “Money transfer is an industry ripe for disruption,” Shulman asserted, concluding “Making international remittances simpler, safer and more affordable is something PayPal is excited to do with our Xoom colleagues.”
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