With the market off to a hot start in 2024 and hitting new highs, investors might assume that they missed the boat and that there aren’t many bargains out there. But there are still compelling investment opportunities.

Take a look at PayPal (PYPL). This fintech giant’s shares are about 80% off their peak price. Don’t let that price history discourage you, though.

Here are three reasons that PayPal is a no-brainer growth stock to buy now with $100 and hold for the long term.

Leader in digital payments
One of the most obvious reasons that investors will want to scoop up shares of PayPal is because of just how much it dominates the electronic payments industry. PayPal was founded more than two decades ago, so it has a long and successful history of facilitating global commerce.

This is a scaled business, with a presence in more than 200 countries and regions. Total payment volume (TPV) was $1.5 trillion in 2023. That was up 13% over 2022 and more than double the amount in pre-pandemic 2019.

Data from the end of 2022 shows that PayPal was the most widely accepted digital wallet, with a near 80% acceptance rate, at the top 1,500 retailers in North America and Europe. And its Braintree segment, which caters to merchants, has grown TPV at a much faster clip than the rest of the business.

PayPal is clearly a dominant force. As online shopping and other forms of cashless transactions become more popular, the business should benefit from a long-term growth driver.

Competitive advantages
PayPal possesses numerous competitive advantages. This is another important reason buying this stock makes sense right now.

As of Dec. 31, the business had 428 million active accounts using its services, creating a two-sided platform of merchants and consumers. This results in powerful network effects, which is an extremely attractive characteristic for a business to have.

Because PayPal has so many users already on its platform, it is able to make exponentially more connections between buyers and sellers. This means that PayPal is more valuable to all of its users than smaller payments systems.

The company has solved the chicken-and-egg problem. In other words, it would be virtually impossible for someone to start a new network from scratch because they would struggle to add merchants and consumers without any existing customers to target or anywhere to shop.

This setup gives PayPal a tremendous data advantage. It is able to collect insights about spending patterns and user behavior from transactions that it processes from both retailers and individuals, leading to improved authorization rates and lower fraud. A payments company that only works with one side of a transaction doesn’t have the thorough perspective PayPal does. Merchants can appreciate this, giving the company a key selling point.

Of course, just because PayPal possesses these advantages doesn’t mean it’s fully protected from the changing industry landscape. At the end of the day, it’s all about making the lives of users easier, with commerce becoming more frictionless over time. There is no shortage of competitors that PayPal has to fend off. But its standing in the industry does deserve some credit.

Cheap valuation
It’s certainly discouraging for shareholders to see that PayPal hasn’t participated in the market’s rally since the start of 2023. Even though the business has continued to post solid financial results, the stock is cheap right now, trading at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of just 12.2.

At that kind of beaten-down valuation, investors might assume that they’re getting a subpar business. But based on the factors outlined above, PayPal is better than the average company out there. It also has a strong balance sheet and generates steady free cash flow that management uses to repurchase shares.

I believe starting a small position in the stock makes sense.

— Neil Patel

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Source: The Motley Fool