The news: PayPal partnered with the Big Ten and Big 12 conferences to enable payments for participating student-athletes.

• Students can then pay their college tuition with PayPal.
• PayPal will also launch conference-branded debit cards that can be personalized with university logos.
• Venmo will act as the presenting partner for the inaugural Big Ten Rivalry Series and will be an official partner of the Big 12 Conference.
• The conference partners will also expand Venmo payment accessibility at university bookstores and athletic events.

Volume opportunity: Following House v. NCAA’s watershed decision, student-athletes can now accept compensation and sponsorships for their athletic work. 

• After the court decision, the NCAA must pay $2.8 billion in back damages to student-athletes who competed from 2016 to today. 
• Each school can distribute up to $20.5 million annually—across 34 participating schools in the two conferences, that could amount to a $697 million volume boost each year. 
• PayPal stands to score even more volume from athletes who choose to pay tuition and make other in-app transactions with these payouts.

What’s at stake: Capturing new, young consumers is a massive opportunity for the payment platform. 

Venmo is marketing itself as a payment platform shoppers can use for “everything” as it tries to make the app more profitable by breaking out of the P2P box. 

Extending its volume opportunities through tuition, school purchases, and athletic events could build payment habits in young consumers that lead them to use PayPal more frequently through the rest of their lives.

Our take: Capitalizing on young, emerging student consumers is a strong opportunity to secure long-time and loyal PayPal and Venmo users. 

These partnerships also give PayPal an opportunity to cross-sell other products.

• It could encourage students to get a PayPal Savings account to hold their revenue-sharing disbursements or a PayPal credit card to use those funds in more locations. 
• PayPal CEO Alex Chriss noted that college-age students’ interest in buy now, pay later is especially strong—which could offer a volume boost for its Pay in 4 product.

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