Thanks to a surge in online shopping over the past year, Paypal reported a rise in Q4 profits.

For the last three months of the year, the group’s profits increased by 209% to $1.6bn (£1.2bn). Revenues also surged by 22% to $6.1bn.

Paypal added 73m net new active accounts and total payment volumes hit $936bn.

President and chief executive Dan Schulman commented: “Paypal delivered record performance in 2020 as businesses of all sizes have digitized in the wake of the pandemic. In this historic year, we released more products than ever before and have dramatically scaled our acceptance worldwide, giving our 377m consumer and merchant accounts even more reasons to use our platform.”

For 2021, Paypal has forecast profits of $25bn. Shares increased in after-hours trading by over 5% to 265,82. Shares in PayPal have gained 40% over the past three months.

Wolfe Research analyst Darrin Peller wrote in a note: “We see the (net-new active) guidance as key given concerns among some investors that the (over 70 million) added in 2020 was a pull-forward and would cause a material retrenchment in 2021.”