PayPal is a global e-commerce payments platform founded in 1998 by Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek and Max Levchin. Originally known as “Confinity Inc.,” the U.S.-based software service merged with dogecoin proponent Elon Musk’s online banking company “X.com” in 2000 and rebranded to “PayPal” a year later.
In 2002, the business was acquired by online marketplace giant eBay for $1.5 billion and became the default payment method for its 185 million users. Thirteen years later, PayPal was spun off from its parent company and went back to being a separate publicly traded company using the same PYPL ticker symbol it had prior to the eBay acquisition.
To date, PayPal boasts over 377 million users worldwide and is the 54th largest company in the world, with a market capitalization of $282.58 billion. During Q4, 2020, the platform processed 3.47 billion transactions worth a combined value of $277 billion.
