PayPal Sets Guinness World Record

PayPal has made its way into the Guinness World Records books — thanks to #GivingTuesday and charitable givers.

PayPal announced yesterday (Jan. 7) that 2015 marked PayPal’s most charitable giving season for the company — ringing in at $857 million given from Nov. 27 through Dec. 31 to charities via PayPal’s platform.

The amount came from 7.24 million people across 183 countries, PayPal said. And through #GivingTuesday, PayPal users helped push PayPal into the Guinness World Records for “Most money raised online for charity in 24 hours.” The total donated in 24 hours was $45.8 million, which PayPal noted was more than double its previous record of $19 million.

“Over a busy holiday season, people were drawn to the convenience of donating online. We saw a massive surge in year-end holiday giving through our platform. Charitable giving via PayPal shattered records during the 2015 holiday season and exceeded our 2014 numbers by more than $113 million — an increase of 15 percent year over year. And this holiday season, we also saw an increase in the number of benefiting charities. A total of 258,759 charities received support this year, representing a 6 percent increase over 2014,” wrote Sean Milliken, director of global social innovation at PayPal.

His post specifically pointed toward how mobile donations were particularly high this holiday season, as people are turning more and more to making a quick and easy payment via PayPal to support many charities. In fact, of the 9.1 million gifts made using PayPal, 21 percent were made on mobile.

The breakdowns by the top countries: United States ($691,924,261), United Kingdom ($49,377,896), Canada ($42,959,820), Germany ($16,752,694), France ($14,415,355) and Australia ($13,023,564).

PayPal announced in late December that donations have all came in a rush, as 10 to 20 percent of total charitable donations come through the last three days of the month. The statistics show growth of as much as 28 percent in charitable donations done through mobile channels year over year, with a fairly sizable sum coming through the month that ended from Nov. 27 to Dec. 28 of this year, to the tune of $630 million across the PayPal platform.

That last minute rush, of course, is to get those donations in to write off for tax purposes for the end of the year.