PayPal, the top player in digital payments systems has over 305 million active user accounts as of 2020.So Who owns PayPal, The company which is now a global leader in online payments, was founded in 1998. Though, earlier, it was started with the name of Confinity owned by Confinity Inc.
Yes, PayPal was earlier known as Confinity. The two-decade journey of PayPal was full of ups and downs only for a couple of years. Its clear idea and business strategies made the company a brilliant player and most used online payment options worldwide.
However it will have to face a tough competition with big tech players in the coming future as it is in a trillion dollar market. As the top tech giants, Apple and Alphabet that have more than enough resources and strategies strengthening their foothold in the market. However, again the market itself has a huge room for many such companies as the world is now digitally transformed and people need more and more options for making online transactions, financial actions effortlessly.
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History of PayPal
Now, coming back to PayPal, it was started by two brilliant technology entrepreneurs Max Levchin, and Peter Thiel. Their idea for PayPal was quite simple and effective. The founders just wanted to provide an effortless online payment method for low cost. As you see PayPal now provides a vast number of services and products for right from transferring money to taking loans.
In fact, with their idea to help people adapt the easy way of making payments to any part of the world, the company is steadily growing.
Thus within 3 years of its launch, the company handled over $3 billion in payments from more than 10 million personal users and 2.6 million commercial customers.Thus numerous small businesses, merchants, customers use PayPal to make transactions effortlessly.
However, as said PayPal was not born successful, it had not generated any revenue initially as it was just a small startup. It only gained a huge popularity after eBay had acquired.
Read: PayPal Business Model – How does PayPal Make Money
Important Events
In 2000, Confinity merged with X.com, an online banking site owned by Elon Musk.
In January 2000, PayPal was introduced as an eBay payment option after which in March 2000, it reached 1 million users.
PayPal was known as Confinity till June 2001. In 2002, the company went public (PYPL) closing with a 50% rise on its first day after changing its name to PayPal.
In October 2002, eBay bought PayPal for around $1.5 billion. It made PayPal as its default payment option at checkout. The bond did not sustain for a long time though.
PayPal competed with Billpoint, Yahoo’s PayDirect, Google Checkout and Citibank’s c2it when eBay owned PayPal.
Later, in 2002 it went public after changing its name from Confinity to PayPal.
PayPal became an independent player splitting from eBay in 2005.
In 2006, PayPal mobile app was launched that allows customers to make transactions via PayPal directly.
In 2019, PayPal generated $17.8 billion revenue. Its total total payment volume of $712 billion and market value is nearly $209 billion.
PayPal has taken 204th rank in 2019 Fortune 500 of the largest United States corporations by revenue.
Enough said, now lets’ quickly get into the topic who owns PayPal.
Who Owns PayPal?
Who owns PayPal- The worldwide popular digital payment platform that helps users make smooth payments has over 305 million accounts worldwide. People use PayPal to transfer money, hold PayPal balance in the digital wallet, withdraw funds through checks, debit and credit cards. There are literally multifold functions one could perform using the amazing online payments platform, PayPal.
However, PayPal has grown to this level with a single leader. There is a mafia for PayPal known as PayPal Mafia.
The PayPal Mafia consists of the richest men in Silicon Valley. Being an independent brand, the most successful businessmen, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Luke Nosek and Ken Howery own the company now. In fact, these groups of people that own Tesla, LinkedIn, SpaceX etc along with former employees are known as the PayPal Mafia that work for the company.
PayPal Acquisitions
Now coming to acquisitions, PayPal has invested in many companies and acquired and merged many brands. Let us see a quick list of its acquisitions.
- The leading fintech company, PayPal acquired VeriSign, a payment solution company in 2005.
- In 2005, the same year it acquired VeriSign, it partnered with MasterCard. It then developed PayPal Secure Card service that allows customers to make PayPal transactions even on websites that don’t accept PayPal directly.
- In 2008, the company bought Fraud Sciences for $169 million.
PayPal had over 100 million active user accounts by 2010 from 25 different countries.
- Later in 2013, PayPal acquired Iron Pearl, an engagement software service company, and Braintree, a payment gateway.
Today, in 2020 PayPal operates in more than 200 countries and handles over 305 million active user accounts.
- Braintree was bought by PayPal in 2013 for around $800 million
- PayPal bought X.com Corp. in November 2015 for an acquisition price of $890 million.
- In September 2018, it bought a payment processing company called iZettle for $2.2 billion
- It acquired Honey Science Corp. an online coupons and discounting company for $4 billion in November, 2019
PayPal app is available online, Play Store and App Store. It launched “One Touch” 1 year after Braintree was acquired.
Bottom Line
The large fintech company and a successful global online payments leader, PayPal is thus now owned by a group of founders and investors. Hope this article helps you in learning more about PayPal, its acquisitions and stats.
Want to know who owns the popular social media platform Instagram? Read it here.
Read: Who Owns Pinterest here.
