New York, May 25, 2026, 13:06 (EDT)
- Nasdaq stayed shut for Memorial Day, so PayPay’s U.S. ADSs didn’t move from Friday’s $19.11 finish.
- The stock dropped roughly 0.9% last week. It’s trading above the $16 IPO price, though it remains well below where it traded just after the listing.
- Now the question is if investors keep backing PayPay’s growth while it expands into credit, banking, and securities.
PayPay Corp shares stood still Monday, with Nasdaq shut for Memorial Day after its American depositary shares dropped 1.55% to $19.11 at Friday’s close. The exchange had May 25 down as a market holiday. Nasdaq’s normal trading runs 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET on weekdays.
PayPay shares are still looking for direction as the stock remains in its price discovery phase after the IPO. The stock slipped from $19.29 on May 15 to $19.11 on May 22, dropping about 0.9% for the week. Around 780,000 shares traded Friday.
PayPay isn’t in free fall, but it’s cooled off. The company’s U.S. IPO priced at $16 per share in March—below the target range—and brought in about $880 million. Shares opened at $19 on Nasdaq, putting the SoftBank-backed firm’s opening valuation near $12.7 billion.
PayPay posted its first full-year results as a listed firm and gave bulls reason to cheer. Revenue climbed 27% to 380.7 billion yen for the year to March 31, and profit jumped 201% to 117.8 billion yen. PayPay expects revenue of 454 billion to 462 billion yen in fiscal 2026 and sees adjusted EBITDA hitting 134.5 billion to 140.5 billion yen. Adjusted EBITDA, the company said, removes interest, tax, depreciation, amortization, and some other expenses.
Chief Executive Ichiro Nakayama told investors the results marked the “first step to fulfill that promise,” tying back to the growth and profit targets laid out during the IPO roadshow. Nakayama also described PayPay’s expansion past QR-code payments into areas like saving, borrowing, and investing as the next stage for the business. PayPay Corp. Investor Relations
PayPay posted a 23% jump in gross merchandise value to 4.98 trillion yen in the fourth quarter. Monthly transacting users climbed to 41 million and registered users hit 73.4 million. Those numbers show why the company’s results mattered.
PayPay CFO Wataru Kagechika said the company isn’t looking for “significant changes in underlying business trends” for fiscal 2026. PayPay is working off assumptions of around 2% consumer-price inflation, a mid-year policy-rate hike of 0.25 percentage point, and a 155 yen per dollar exchange rate.
PayPay closed down harder on Friday compared to PayPal Holdings, which slipped to $44.23, and Block, which was down at $68.08. PayPay is still a fresh story in the public markets, leaning more on Japan’s push toward cashless payments than competing in the established U.S. checkout sector.
The focus for the week shifts to how the stock trades after earnings instead of new headlines. Bulls want to see a push above $19.76, which was the close on May 20, to keep the earnings momentum in play. But if shares slip under last week’s $18.92 low, the range since the results gets tested.
The bear case isn’t only about charts. PayPay says it faces risks in handling growth, keeping users on board, bringing in more merchants, pushing up transaction volumes, and staying within tough financial and banking rules. Those are bigger issues as PayPay moves further into lending, deposits, and securities. Credit losses or tougher rules could hit margins fast.
For now, the market takes a breather. On Tuesday, PayPay faces a new test—will it trade as a fintech with real profits and a wider financial push, or as a recent IPO that still needs to back up its early valuation in the market?
