Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL) has reported that the adjusted earnings per share of 42 cents in the fourth quarter of 2016, while reported the first quarter revenue of $2.98 billion. Paypal stock fell over 1% in the pre-market session on January 27th, 2017 (Source: Google finance).

The company has added 5.4 million active customer accounts during the first quarter and posted a 23 percent increase in payment transactions, which rose to 1.8 billion. Total payment volume grew 22 percent to $99 billion.

PYPL has been trying to gain a foothold in offline payments, and it did make some headway last year as it signed the agreements with MasterCard and Visa. Therefore, the consumers are now able to use their PayPal accounts to pay for items at brick-and-mortar stores. These also gave users more ways to load and spend money in their online PayPal and Venmo accounts. They also did more business with big merchants who demand cheap transaction rates but now widely accept payments via PayPal and Venmo. In addition, PYPL is in discussion with Amazon.com Inc. to let the shoppers pay for Amazon purchases using their PYPL accounts, focusing on how PYPL can attract new partners since its 2015 split from Amazon rival EBay Inc. to expand its electronic transactions business.

PYPL have been wagering that volume growth can outpace a drop in the cost of transacting as alternative ways to move money online proliferate and payments networks and banks look to keep more transactional revenue for themselves.

For the full year 2016, PYPL has reported the profit of $1.4 billion, the earnings per share of $1.15 and the revenue of $10.84 billion.

For the first quarter 2017 ending in April, PYPL expects the earnings-per-share to be in the range from 40 cents to 42 cents. The revenue for the Q1 2017 is expected to be in the range of $2.9 billion to $2.95 billion. Additionally, PYPL expects full-year 2017 earnings per share to be in the range of $1.69 to $1.74 and the revenue is expected to be in the range of $12.45 billion to $12.65 billion.

PYPL stock has risen 30.96% in a year (source: Google Finance). According to tipranks.com, 11 analysts has covered the stock while recommending a “Strong Buy”. PYPL has an average price target of $47.91, which is a further upside of 15.45%.