Paypal’s new Ad manager is Democratization or data Monetization? 

PayPal’s announcement of its new Ad Manager introduces a significant shift in how small businesses can leverage advertising opportunities. But the tool is built on something far more revealing: the 25 years of user payment data is now being repurposed for ad targeting. This move appears as “Empowering” ( and it is in hindsight), but it’s actually PayPal turning its vast transaction history into a new revenue stream. 

This marks a quiet shift in PayPal’s transition from a financial service to a data monetization platform. The same purchase data once used to secure payments is now being used to sell attention. It’s the same playbook that Facebook did with social graphs and Google did with search histories; PayPal is now set to do the same with spending behavior. 

Data Exploitation 

Paypal’s talk of “proprietary transaction graphs” and “closed-loop attribution” sounds innovative. But it’s actually just corporate shorthand for how, where, and what people spend money on. Over 25 years, the company has accumulated data on purchasing habits, merchant choices, price sensitivity, and financial behavior, now it’s a no-brainer that this data is a goldmine for businesses to craft targeted ads. 

By monetizing this data without proper consent or an opt-out option, PayPal is also joining the ranks of many others who broke the unspoken contract of privacy with their consumer base. Unlike traditional retail media, where companies like Target or Walmart can use data from only their own stores for branding, PayPal has access to cross-merchant information. 

This renders an unmatched view of consumer behavior to the app, and it appears now they’re gonna cash that data in for some big bucks.

The Illusion of Empowerment 

The company has labeled its new ad manager as an empowerment tool for the small business, but it’s not an act of generosity. Small merchants contribute website traffic and consumer data, while PayPal monetizes that activity, using transaction insights collected across its massive merchant network.  

The likely revenue split heavily favours PayPal, leaving merchants the token returns for providing the very attention and engagement that powers the entire system. 

No Cost or Commitments

Remember the good old times, when we used to think, “why do these social engines offer their services to us for free”? The answer is because your attention span, eyeballs, and engagement are their price. You’re not there for a product; you are the product. Paypal’s pitches of “no upfront costs or commitments” echoes social media’s early promises. Just as Facebook and Instagram turned users into unpaid content suppliers, PayPal is set to turn small businesses into ad inventory sources. 

In other words, you might not pay anything for being on the platform, but millions of businesses pay for access to your data, targeting their ads just in the direction that you behave. Similarly, once these small businesses begin relying on that ad revenue from PayPal, the dependency sets in. What’s framed as democratization is, in reality, data colonialism, a platform extracting value from the very businesses it claims to empower.

Paypal’s ad manager frames itself as a tool for small businesses’ growth, but the reality tells a different story. By leveraging decades of transaction data for targeted advertising, PayPal has shifted from a neutral payment processor into a data-driven advertising mediatory, profiting from both consumer privacy and merchants’ traffic.