PayPal is global e-commerce platform allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders.
PayPal has become a global leader in online payment solutions with more than 153 million accounts worldwide, in 190 markets and 24 currencies. PayPal enables global ecommerce by making payments possible across different locations, currencies, and languages.
Creation
PayPal was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel as Confinity, a company allowing users to store encrypted information on PDA devices – in effect creating the first digital wallet. It was not until October of 1999 when a Confinity engineer demonstrated a test product enabling payments to be sent over email that the current PayPal email payment product was born.
Financing
We met the PayPal founders when the company was young and looking for office space to house their young startup. They chose our “lucky building” on 165 University Avenue – the same building which had previously incubated Google and Logitech from fledgling startups to global success stories, and moved in in 1999. We invested early; backing an exceptional team despite the enormous challenges they faced on their road to revolutionize financial services.
Growth
The growth of the company was stratospheric: in January of 2000, the first PayPal logos started appearing on eBay auctions. By the end of the month PayPal grew to 100,000 accounts and by March to 1 million, growing 10x in just two months. Also in March, Confinity merges with competitor X.com.
Exit
In February 2002, PayPal filed for its Initial Public Offering and in October the Company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 Billion.