Mobile phones allow consumers to have "a mall in their pocket;" eBay allows them to pay for the goods they buy, CEO John Donahoe told CNBC Thursday.
Manuel Balce Ceneta
Apple iPhone
"They feel like they got a mall in their pocket with their mobile device, and that mall is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he told Squawk on the Street. "It allows consumers to get what they want, when they want it, how they want it. And eBay and [unit] PayPal are at the forefront of mobile innovation."
A lot of people have been going to that "mall." Late Wednesday eBay
reported first-quarter earningsabove analyst expectations and 29 percent revenue growth driven by its PayPal and Marketplace businesses.
According to Donahue, some consumers are not comfortable with entering their credit card information into a mobile device, so they are turning to products such as eBay's PayPal payment service. With PayPal, consumers can pay for their purchases without sharing their specific credit card information with the vendor.
One growth area for the company is the Bill Me Later application, which is another PayPal service. Bill Me Later, as the name implies, allows a shopper to defer payment for 28 days. At the end of that period, consumers have the option to revolve the balance longer.
"Bill Me Later is the easiest way to get consumer credit for PayPal users and to allow PayPal users choice about what payment terms they want and when they pay back their balances," Donahoe said. "We're seeing explosive growth...It's the most profitable funding source in the PayPal wallet."
Reuters contributed to this report.
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