Happy 10th Birthday PayPal!

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 24 June 2008 02:31

Business IT - Technology

The policies of its now owner, eBay, may have mired PayPal in controversy around the world, but that has not stopped the online payment service celebrating 10 years of operation with a commemorative website and a survey.

PayPal claims to process $US2000 every second, representing some nine percent of global e-commerce and 12 percent in the US. It operates in 190 countries in 17 currencies, has 60 million active accounts and in 2007 transacted $US47 billion.

The organisation received its first round of funding, $US4.5m in July 1999 'beamed' to a PayPal enabled palm pilot from Nokia Ventures and Deutsche Bank. In October 1999 it launched email payments and its business on eBay was born. It went public in February 2002, the first company to do so after 9/11. eBay announced its plan to acquire the company in July 2002. In October 2005 PayPal acquired VeriSign's payment gateway business and combines it with its own merchant services platform.

The PayPal 10th Anniversary Survey was conducted by Ipsos from March 27 – March 31, 2008 through an email invitation to 1000 online panellists. Its published results are hardly surprising.