Banking, finance, and taxes

How PayPal and Synchrony Are Further Strengthening Their Partnership

Chris Lange

Published: July 3, 2018 8:50 am

Last Updated: January 11, 2020 9:32 pm

PayPal Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) and Synchrony Financial (NYSE: SYF) took a step forward in their relationship and announced that they had closed their consumer credit receivables transaction. Overall, this collaboration plays to both companies’ strengths in providing seamless digital payments and innovating for their partners, merchants and consumers.

Also with the completion of the transaction, PayPal and Synchrony have extended their existing co-brand consumer credit card program agreement, and Synchrony is now the exclusive issuer of the PayPal Credit online consumer financing program in the United States through 2028.

Under the terms of the transaction, and related transactions with unaffiliated third parties, Synchrony acquired $7.6 billion in receivables, including PayPal’s U.S. consumer credit receivables portfolio. This totaled $6.8 billion at the time of closing and included roughly $0.8 billion in participation interests in receivables held by unaffiliated third parties. PayPal received about $6.9 billion in total consideration at closing.

Since 2004, PayPal and Synchrony have partnered to offer PayPal-branded consumer credit cards to consumers. The expanded agreement with Synchrony Bank for both the U.S. PayPal Credit online consumer financing program and the U.S. PayPal-branded consumer credit card program allows PayPal to collaborate with an industry leader to enrich and expand PayPal’s consumer credit offerings.

Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal, commented:

We’re pleased that we’ve completed the sale of our U.S. consumer credit receivables portfolio. Our agreement with Synchrony accomplishes every goal we set out for our asset light strategy. We look forward to working with Synchrony to double down on our innovative consumer credit experiences for our customers and profitably grow the portfolio over time.

Shares of PayPal closed Monday at $83.89, with a consensus analyst price target of $88.61 and a 52-week trading range of $52.94 to $87.55. Following the announcement, the stock was up 0.7% at $84.50 in early trading indications Tuesday.

Synchrony shares closed at $33.84, with a consensus price target of $43.36 and a 52-week range of $28.33 to $40.59. The stock was flat in early indications Tuesday.