| Paypal: | | | | led to three CEO changes in its first year of |
| PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments | | | | operations. Foreign organized crime rings found ways |
| and money transfers to be made through the | | | | to steal millions from the young company by |
| internet. It serves as an electronic alternative to | | | | automatically registering accounts using stolen |
| traditional paper methods such as checks and money | | | | identities. To block automated systems from using |
| orders. PayPal performs payment processing for | | | | this form of fraud, PayPal devised a system (see |
| online vendors, auction sites, and other corporate | | | | Captcha) of making the user enter numbers from a |
| users, for which it charges a fee. In October 2002, | | | | blurry picture; according to Eric M. Jackson, author of |
| PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay. | | | | the book The PayPal Wars, PayPal invented this |
| Their corporate headquarters is in San Jose, California. | | | | system now in common use; though, there is |
| PayPal account holders must be 16 or over with a | | | | evidence AltaVista used a captcha as early as 1997, |
| debit/credit card or bank account and e-mail address. | | | | before PayPal existed.eBay watched the rise in |
| To Sign Up for Paypal go here: | | | | volume of online payments, and realized its fit with |
| Beginnings: | | | | online auctions. But rather than work with PayPal, |
| PayPal Corp, as it is known today, is the result of a | | | | eBay purchased a competing payment service named |
| March 2000 merger between Confinity and X.com[1]. | | | | Billpoint. eBay made Billpoint the official payment |
| Confinity was founded in December of 1998 by Peter | | | | system of eBay, dubbing it "eBay Payments", but cut |
| Thiel and Max Levchin, initially as a Palm Pilot | | | | the functionality of Billpoint by narrowing it to only |
| payments and cryptography company[2]. was | | | | payments made for eBay auctions. |
| founded by Elon Musk in March of 1999, initially as an | | | | For this reason PayPal was listed in several times as |
| Internet financial services company. Both companies | | | | many auctions as Billpoint. In February of 2000 there |
| were located on University Avenue in Palo Alto. On | | | | were approximately an average of 200,000 daily |
| the Confinity business side, many of its initial recruits | | | | auctions advertising the PayPal service while Billpoint |
| were alumni of The Stanford Review, also founded | | | | (in beta) had only 4,000 auctions. By April of 2000 |
| by Peter Thiel, and most early engineers hailed from | | | | there were more than 1,000,000 auctions promoting |
| the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, | | | | the PayPal service. PayPal was able to turn the |
| recruited by Max Levchin. On the side, Elon Musk | | | | corner and become the first dot-com to IPO after |
| recruited a wide range of personnel, many of whom | | | | the September 11 attacks. |
| remain at PayPal today, such as the current head of | | | | Near the time when PayPal went public (first quarter |
| product, Amy Klement [3] and several other | | | | 2002), it filed an anti-competition complaint against |
| members of the senior team. | | | | eBay on the grounds of using its auction venue to |
| Though growing rapidly, PayPal was losing $10 million | | | | attempt to force PayPal off its site. However, the |
| a month and was fraught with internal turmoil that | | | | company eventually reconciled with its former rival. |