PayPal Deepens College Push: Can Tuition Payments Drive More Volume?

PayPal Holdings, Inc. PYPL is expanding its presence in college payments by adding PayPal and Venmo as tuition payment options through integrations with Illumia, Nelnet Campus Commerce and TouchNet. Students and families at participating schools can pay tuition fees through their school portals. The integrations are live at Bellarmine University, Butler University, Kansas State University, Michigan State University and Texas Tech University.

The move connects PayPal with education-payment platforms that collectively serve thousands of U.S. colleges and universities. Nelnet Campus Commerce alone supports more than 1,100 higher-education institutions. PayPal expects more schools to join throughout the year, widening the reach of PYPL and Venmo for one of the biggest expenses faced by students and families.

Users can fund tuition payments with bank accounts, credit cards or PayPal and Venmo balances, subject to account requirements. The payments use PayPal’s existing encryption and fraud monitoring. The launch follows PayPal and Venmo’s Big Ten and Big 12 agreements a year earlier, which included institutional revenue-share payments for student athletes.

The tuition expansion comes as PayPal’s payments business grows. The company’s second-quarter 2026 total payment volume rose 10% to $486.4 billion, while revenues increased 5% to $8.68 billion. Active accounts reached 439 million and payment transactions rose 8% to 6.8 billion.

Venmo is also becoming a bigger growth driver. PayPal said Venmo and Braintree both grew payment volume in the mid-teens in the second quarter of 2026. Venmo Debit Card monthly active accounts increased more than 50%, while Pay with Venmo monthly active accounts grew 30%, supporting PayPal’s push beyond peer-to-peer transfers into broader money management.

How Are Other Competitors Faring?

Flywire Corp FLYW has pursued a closely comparable higher-education payments strategy. In April 2026, Penn State selected Flywire to manage all tuition payments, expanding a decade-long international-payments relationship into domestic billing, payment plans, collections and refunds. The agreement materially deepens Flywire’s campus role, covering a university population of more than 100,000 students.

Adyen ADYEY expanded its strategic partnership with accesso in February 2026, embedding ADYEY’s payment capabilities across accesso’s leisure, entertainment and cultural technology platforms. The arrangement supports digital and on-site transactions across multiple regions and sales channels. Accesso ecosystem currently handles more than $5 billion in annual transaction volume.

PYPL’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Shares of PayPal have gained 39.1% in the past three months compared with the broader industry and the S&P 500 Index.

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From a valuation standpoint, PayPal’s shares are trading cheaply, as suggested by the Value Score of A. In terms of forward 12-month P/E, PYPL stock is trading at 10.85X, which is at a significant discount to the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry’s 18.84X.

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PayPal’s estimate revisions reflect a positive trend. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for full-year 2026 EPS has been revised upward to $5.38 in the past week. The consensus estimate for the metric indicates a year-over-year increase of 1.13%.

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PayPal currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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