Discussing Q4 earnings with analysts, PayPal CFO John Rainey disclosed that 4.5 million accounts had been shut down after “bad actors” took advantage of incentives and rewards programmes, resulting in shares falling by 25%, according to Bloomberg.

On the conference call, PayPal representatives revealed that inflation and supply chain disruption were to blame for customers with lower incomes spending less and an increase in in-store shopping. This led to the payments company foregoing its ambition of reaching 750 million active accounts by 2025.

In an attempt to reach this goal, PayPal had started to offer $10 incentives to those opening new accounts in 2021, but recently found that many accounts had been created by bot farms. Rainey said: “We regularly assess our active account base to ensure the accounts are legitimate.”

He added: “This is particularly important during incentive campaigns that can be targets for bad actors attempting to reap the benefit from these offers without ever having an intent to be a legitimate customer on our platform.”