Profits almost double to more than €10m at PayPal’s Irish unit

One of Ireland’s largest multinational employers saw profits almost double last year as the numbers working for the company increased to more than 2,500 people.

Newly filed accounts for the Irish unit of online payments giant Paypal show pretax profits jumped from €5.8 million to €10.2 million last year as turnover rose to €184 million from €168 million.

PayPal Europe Services Limited provides customer support, risk operations, and corporate administrative services to the wider group.

“The directors are satisfied with the performance of the company, which is broadly in line with expectations,” the company said in a note included in the latest accounts.

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“Increased revenues in 2016 reflects an increase in activity carried out by the company utilising additional headcount to support increased volumes of support services activities,” it added.

Employee numbers at the Blanchardstown headquarters rose to 2,527 from 2,320 last year with staff costs increasing to €114 million from €102 million.

A breakdown of employees by activity shows 1,423 people were working in customer-support roles with a further 934 in admin-related activities. In addition, 139 were in sales and marketing jobs with the remaining staff focusing on product development.

The company announced 100 new jobs for its Ballycoolin operation last year as it proceeds with a plan to increase headcount to 3,000 in Ireland by 2018.

Founded in 1998, PayPal enables individuals and businesses to send and receive payments online. The company, which had 197 million active customer accounts at the end of 2016, recorded revenues of €10.84 billion last year as transactions per active account increased 13 per cent from 27 to 31.

EBay spun off PayPal in 2015, having acquired the company for $1.2 billion in October 2002.