Dive Brief:
- PayPal Holdings has reached agreements with the Big Ten and Big 12 collegiate sports conferences and will facilitate university payments to their student athletes, the digital payments provider said in a Thursday press release. The company will earn a slice of revenue from handling the university payments to athletes, with a first phase of the program expected to begin this summer.
- In addition, PayPal is planning to start offering more services to students and their parents, offering them ways to make tuition payments, starting next year.
- The company’s Venmo peer-to-peer services unit, which already has a niche with young consumers, will also make a bid for more student payments by enabling acceptance of the its digital wallet at more campus bookstores and for tickets to events, PayPal said.
Dive Insight:
San Jose, California-based PayPal has been seeking to better monetize its Venmo digital wallet for years, so the new connection to the college conferences will further that goal. PayPal CEO Alex Chriss, who has talked about his son’s Venmo experience at college, has amplified the effort since he took the top post in 2023.
Venmo “is doubling down in its focus on younger consumers by expanding its position as a cornerstone of campus life and commerce,” the company said in the release. The digital wallet currently has about 64 million U.S. accounts, according to the release.
A spokesperson for PayPal didn’t immediately respond to a question about how the revenue-split with the universities will work and how much it will earn from the new relationships.
In addition to facilitating the university payments to athletes and increasing the availability of Venmo on campus, the company will boost its advertising at college sporting events, starting with schools’ 2025-2026 football season.
Venmo is also linked to a Mastercard debit card that the company touted as offering students cashback rewards for a limited period.
The Big Ten conference, founded in 1896, comprises 28 sports programs, including 14 for men and 14 for women, at 18 universities, according to the release, while the Big 12 conference has 16 universities, including Texas Tech, Kansas State and Oklahoma State.
