About the Company
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American enterprise engaged in financial services. Its headquarters are in San Jose, California, United States. PayPal was established in December 1998, when Confinity, a software company based in Silicon Valley, and X.com, an online banking platform founded by Elon Musk, merged their assets. This merger led to the formation of a combined entity which retained the name X.com. The company changed its corporate name to PayPal in 2001. It went public via an initial public offering in 2002, and its shares began trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol of PYPL. PYPL shares are also included as a component on several stock market indices, namely S&P 500, S&P 100 and NASDAQ-100.
Shortly after its initial public offering in 2001, eBay acquired PayPal in a transaction of $1.5 billion. Subsequently, it became the default online payment method by a majority of eBay’s customers. PayPal acquired VeriSign’s payment gateway business for a purchase price of $370 million. Through this acquisition, PayPal expanded its non-eBay business. PYPL entered into a partnership with Mastercard in 2007, which led to the launch of PayPal Secure Card. In 2008, PayPal bought-off Fraud Sciences, an Israeli start-up that produced online risk tools, for a transaction value of $169 million. That same year, it also acquired Bill Me Later for $945 million, which was later rebranded to PayPal Credit. By 2010, PYPL had operations in about 190 markets through 25 currencies and catered to more than 100 million active users. Another acquisition took place in 2013 when it purchased IronPearl, a start-up by Palo Alto as well as Braintree, a Chicago-based online payment platform. In 2015, eBay and PayPal decided to split-off their businesses into two separate publicly trading companies. A major merger took place in 2015 when PAYPAL acquires Xoom Corporation, a money transfer company, in a transaction of $890 million. This acquisition facilitated PayPal to expand its digital payments business as a stand-alone company. In 2018, it bought-off iZettle, a Swedish payment processor, for $2.2 billion. It entered into a partnership with Instagram and introduced a new checkout feature called “Checkout on Instagram”. As of 2021, PayPal’s largest acquisition occurred in 2020 when it purchased Honey Science Corporation, a shopping rewards platform, for $4 billion.
As of 2021, the company has 361 million active accounts and payment transactions worth $4.0 billion. It operated internationally in numerous countries, such as Canada, Australia, Germany, India, Japan, Italy, Russia, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Israel, Singapore, Turkey, Spain and Brazil, among others. PayPal ranked 182nd on the list of Fortune 500 companies. It ranked 249th on Forbes’ list of Global 2000 2020 companies. Forbes also included PYPL in its rankings of World’s Best Employers, Most Valuable Brands and Just Companies 2021, among others.;
Organisation | PayPal Holdings Inc |
Industry | Credit Services |
HeadQuarters | San Jose, CA |