US person-to-person payments firm PayPal says it has registered almost 35 million user accounts in Europe.
Ebay-subsidiary PayPal processed $8.4 billion of total payment volume in Europe in 2006 and says its growth in the region is due to high penetration rates among online shoppers in the major European markets, including the UK, Germany, France and Italy.
In the UK PayPal has over 15 million accounts, representing over a third of the adult population and over half of all Internet users.
Commenting on the figures, Brent Bellm, vice president of PayPal Europe, says "PayPal has worked hard to build a safe and convenient payment service specifically tailored to European e-commerce."
PayPal has over 133 million accounts worldwide and offers transfers to 103 international market destinations.
Earlier this week VoIP outfit Skype - which is another eBay subsdiary - said it would soon enable its customers to send money to other Skype users via the PayPal online payments system.