Data Lens
Data Lens is a Snowflake-based cloud data sharing product that provides merchants with direct SQL access to their payments data.
Through Snowflake Secure Data Sharing, PayPal exposes payments data as a governed dataset that you can query from your own Snowflake environment. This allows you to analyze your payments data using standard SQL without building or maintaining data ingestion pipelines.
The dataset includes:
- Fees
- Transactions
- Disbursements (bank transfers)
- Disputes
All data is delivered with consistent schemas and built-in governance to ensure accuracy, consistency, and reliability.
This dataset is designed for analytics, reconciliation, and reporting workflows using SQL.
How to think about the data
Data Lens is structured around the flow of funds:
Transactions → Fees → Disputes → Transfer (Bank Deposit)
At a high level:
Bank Deposit = Transactions - Fees - Disputes
- The transfer data represents actual money movement to your bank account (source of truth).
- Transaction, fee, and dispute datasets explain how each transfer is calculated.
How it works
Data Lens uses Snowflake Secure Data Sharing to provide access to PayPal-managed datasets.
- PayPal ingests and maintains payments data within its Snowflake environment.
- Data is shared privately to the merchant.
- You query the data directly from your Snowflake account using SQL.
No data movement or ingestion is required to begin querying.
PayPal Systems → Snowflake (PayPal) → Secure Data Share → Your Snowflake Account → Your Systems (Your Queries/applications)
You query PayPal-hosted data via Snowflake sharing; you don't ingest it.
Architecture layers
The Data Lens architecture can be understood in the following layers:
| Layer | Component | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Source | PayPal systems | Payment processing, settlement, and dispute systems |
| Pipeline | PayPal data pipelines | Internal pipelines ingest and transform data into Snowflake with low latency |
| Storage | Snowflake (PayPal) | Hosted dataset managed by PayPal |
| Access | Secure Data Share | Data shared to your Snowflake account |
| Query Interface | SQL/Connectors | Access data using SQL via Snowflake UI, JDBC/ODBC, or connectors |
| Client | Your environment | BI tools, custom apps, data pipelines |
Key capabilities
These capabilities enable you to begin querying and analyzing your payments data immediately using standard SQL.
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| Near real-time data | Access transaction data in near real time across regions and payment method |
| Full SQL access | Execute SQL queries directly on shared data. No APIs or data ingestion required |
| 5 core tables | Transfers, Transaction Disbursements, Fees, Fee Summary, Dispute Disbursements |
| Authentication methods | Supports Snowflake authentication methods (SSO, RBAC, encryption, and audit logging) |
| Multi-language access (via Snowflake connectors) | Supports Python, Java, JS, Go, C#, Ruby, PHP |