On February 14 we announced our agreement to acquire TIO Networks, a leading bill payment processing company.
Today, I am pleased to report that the acquisition is complete and that we welcome the TIO team to our PayPal family.
Since separating from eBay two years ago, PayPal has made significant strides towards realizing our mission to democratize financial services and provide secure, convenient and affordable ways to move and manage money to those who are underserved by the financial system. Expanding into multi-channel bill payments through the acquisition of TIO furthers this mission and will meaningfully advance our ability to offer digital financial services to tens of millions of underserved customers.
TIO gives consumers who may not have access to digital financial services the ability to transfer cash into a digital network and benefit from the convenience and speed of digital bill payments. We intend to offer this service within our online and mobile experiences that PayPal consumers already trust to manage and move their money to provide them with easier and faster ways to pay bills to help avoid missing payment deadlines, incurring service interruptions and facing penalties.
The acquisition will expand PayPal’s reach into the U.S. bill payment channel with more than 10,000 supported billers, over 62,000 payment locations and 16 million consumer bill pay accounts. We see tremendous opportunity to extend TIO’s services and this reach through PayPal’s two-sided network, growing consumer base and our deep local market knowledge. Over the course of the next year, we plan to fully integrate TIO into the PayPal mobile app.
TIO will operate as a separate service within PayPal under the continued leadership of Hamed Shahbazi, VP of Bill Pay and General Manager, PayPal Canada Bill Pay Services, reporting to John Kunze, VP of PayPal, and Leader of the Consumer Product Organization.
TIO has already advanced the democratization of financial services and we are excited by the opportunity to extend this valuable service to our existing customers in the US and Canada. We look forward to working with our new colleagues to make bill payment as fast and simple as making a payment with PayPal.