Introduction
PayPal took the world by storm at a period when people thought money transactions could not go beyond bank accounts. Sending and receiving money online was a time consuming and troublesome process back in the 90s.
Since being founded by Elon Musk, PayPal has grown into one of the largest online transaction services in the world. This was formed by two of its parent companies that merged in 2000. Confinity Inc. established to build secure software to facilitate financial transactions on individual devices. It established when Confinity Inc. merged with X.com, another online banking company founded by Elon Musk. It gained huge popularity with its referral programs and cheap charges for signing up. Eventually, the charges came down from $20 to $5.
Users in PayPal
PayPal earned 5 million new users between March of 2000 and the summer of the same year. PayPal’s business started booming as the number of users signing up skyrocketed. It joined in among publicly traded companies later in 2002. PayPal stock prices witnessed a staggering growth of 55% on NASDAQ. This astounding hike was the indicator of PayPal’s huge success. Soon it started gaining attention across the globe.
In the same year, eBay Inc. bought it for a price of $1.5 billion. For financial transactions, this became the prime choice of eBay since its acquisition happened. In 2005, as a strategy adopted to expand itself worldwide acquired VeriSign payment solutions. Another milestone in the history of this was when it acquired Braintree payments gateway for a price of $800.
Investor in PayPal
An investor in PayPal, Carl Icahn kick-started a public campaign demanding the company to be split from eBay. Carl Icahn argued that this could at faster rates create an independent company. Soon, the public campaign proved to be successful.
After remaining under eBay for several years, it split from eBay in 2014 and returned to business as a public company. The split from eBay acted as a catalyst in increasing the market value of PayPal. As Carl Icahn predicted, the market value of PayPal increased at an astonishing rate. It increased $49 billion on the first day of trading, after transforming itself into a public company again.
Growth
It continued to grow at an astonishing rate. PayPal, later on successfully acquired several other operators of online payments. Venmo, a payment app acquired by it in 2014 and Xoom money-transfer, acquired by it in 2015, for a price of $890 million. Another online money transaction service, Paydiant was acquired for a price of $280 million.
Today, PayPal facilitates the user’s fund withdrawals in 56 different currencies. It is capable of receiving funds in more than 100 currencies. This also allows us to hold balances in 30 different currencies. Additionally, this has tied up with some big names in finance such as Google, Alibaba, and Vodafone. It is acclaimed as the world’s largest and most secure online transaction platform. Being one of the most reliable online payment services, PayPal continues to expand.
