PayPal Celebrates 10 Years

Founded in 1998 and acquired by eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY - News) in 2002, PayPal enables global e-commerce by giving consumers confidence and choices to pay online without having to worry about sharing financial information. PayPal users can pay from their PayPal balance, bank account, or by credit card, and can easily send and receive money in 17 currencies across 190 countries in which PayPal operates. With more than 60 million active accounts, PayPal transacted $47 billion in 2007.

“Over the past decade, PayPal has allowed people to do something that few ever dreamed possible 10 years ago – send and receive money all around the world through the click of a button,” said Scott Thompson, president of PayPal. “We’re proud of the role we’ve played in the growth of e-commerce, and we’re energized about what the next 10 years will bring.”

In honor of its 10 years on the Internet, PayPal commissioned a survey, conducted by Ipsos Research, to provide insight into consumers’ opinions about the Internet, ecommerce and behavior online. Eighty-four percent of U.S. respondents say they have been shopping online for five or more years, and 87 percent report that they shop online at least once per month. Sixty-four percent of those surveyed cite fellow customers’ reviews as the top source for online shopping recommendations, up from just 11 percent in the 1990s. One quarter of those surveyed said their first e-commerce purchase was travel related (e.g. airline tickets), and travel goods and services remain the most widely purchased items online today (82 percent).

The survey also showed that people are spending more time online than ever before. In the last 10 years, individual Internet use has grown from a once-a-week activity, to something that occupies several hours of people’s time every day. Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed spend at least half of each day online. Forty-four percent can’t imagine life without e-mail, but at the same time, 39 percent worry that the Internet has made Americans less social.

Other interesting survey findings include:

• Eighty percent of U.S. online shoppers say that the Internet has made their lives easier, and 72 percent think the Internet’s best days are still ahead.
• When asked what annoyed consumers most about the Internet, half of the respondents cited spam, followed by scams and fraud at 37 percent.
• Forty-four percent of those surveyed say the one thing they couldn’t live without is e-mail, while 31 percent cited their dependence on search engines.
• Three percent can’t live without social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace.

PayPal at 10

Key milestones in the company’s ten year history include:

• July 1999: PayPal receives $4.5 million in its first round of funding “beamed” to a PayPal enabled palm pilot from Nokia Ventures and Deutsche Bank.
• October 1999: PayPal launches email payments and its business on eBay is born
• March 2000: X.com and Confinity merge.
• February 2002: PayPal becomes the first company to go public after 9/11 Nasdaq: PYPL
• July 2002: PayPal announces that it has agreed to be acquired by eBay Inc. December 2004: After the addition of PayPal as a payments option on eBay UK, PayPal’s revenue numbers grow by nearly 300% to $1.4 billion globally.
• October 2005: PayPal acquires VeriSign’s payment gateway business and combines it with PayPal’s merchant services platform.
• January 2007: PayPal introduces the PayPal Security Key, which adds an additional layer of protection when users log into their PayPal or eBay accounts.
• June 2008: PayPal has more than 60 million active accounts in 190 countries and 17 currencies around the world.