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PayPal

PayPal Holdings, Inc.
PayPal.svg
Available in Multilingual
Traded as
Founded December 1998; 18 years ago (1998-12) (as Confinity)
Predecessor(s) Confinity
Headquarters 2211 North First Street, San Jose, California, United States 95131
Coordinates 37°22′37″N 121°55′21″W / 37.3770°N 121.9226°W / 37.3770; -121.9226Coordinates: 37°22′37″N 121°55′21″W / 37.3770°N 121.9226°W / 37.3770; -121.9226
Area served Worldwide
Founder(s) Max Levchin
Peter Thiel
Luke Nosek
Ken Howery
Elon Musk
Key people John Donahoe (Chairman)
Dan Schulman (CEO)
Industry Financial Services
Products Credit cards, payment systems
Revenue IncreaseUS$9.24 billion (2015)
Operating income DecreaseUS$0.76 billion (2016)
Profit IncreaseUS$1.22 billion (2015)
Total assets DecreaseUS$10.88 billion (2016)
Total equity IncreaseUS$20.75 billion (2016)
Employees 18,000 (2016)
Parent eBay (2002–2014)
Subsidiaries Braintree
Paydiant
Venmo
PayPal Credit
Xoom Corporation
Website www.paypal.com
Alexa rank Decrease 52 (November 2016)
Advertising No
Registration Yes
Users Increase 188 million (2016)
Launched December 1998 (1998-12)
Current status Active
Native client(s) on iOS
Android
Windows
Written in C++,JavaScript (as Node.js),Python

PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American company operating a worldwide online payments system that supports online money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. PayPal is one of the world's largest Internet payment companies. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and other commercial users, for which it charges a fee.

Established in 1998, PayPal had its IPO in 2002, and became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay later that year.

In 2014, PayPal moved $228 billion in 30 currencies across more than 190 nations, generating a total revenue of $7.9 billion (44% of eBay’s total profits). The same year, eBay announced plans to spin-off PayPal into an independent company by mid-2015 and this was completed on July 18, 2015.

On July 20, 2015, PayPal had its second IPO, which valued the company at $46.6 billion.

PayPal was established in December 1998 as Confinity, a company that developed security software for handheld devices founded by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek and Ken Howery. PayPal was developed and launched as a money transfer service at Confinity in 1999, funded by John Malloy from BlueRun Ventures.

In March 2000, Confinity merged with X.com, an online banking company founded by Elon Musk. Musk was optimistic about the future success of the money transfer business Confinity was developing. Musk and then-president and CEO of X.com, Bill Harris, disagreed on this point and Harris left the company in May 2000. In October of that year, Musk made the decision that X.com would terminate its other Internet banking operations and focus on the PayPal money service. The X.com company was then renamed PayPal in 2001, and expanded rapidly throughout the year until company executives decided to take PayPal public in 2002. Paypal's IPO listed under the ticker PYPL at $13 per share and ended up generating over $61 million.

Shortly after PayPal's IPO, the company was acquired by eBay in July 2002 for $1.5 billion. More than 70 percent of all eBay auctions accepted PayPal payments, and roughly 1 in 4 closed auction listings were transacted via PayPal. PayPal became the payment method used by a majority of eBay users (it was also the default choice), and the service competed with eBay's subsidiary Billpoint, as well as Citibank's c2it, Yahoo!'s PayDirect, Google Checkout and Western Union's BidPay service, all of which closed in subsequent years.


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