PayPal

Year: 1999
Creator: Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk
Company: Confinity and X.com (merged as PayPal)
Location: Palo Alto, California
Room: The Gold Rush ↗

Description

PayPal is a payment service from Confinity, a Palo Alto startup incorporated in December 1998. Confinity first showed PayPal on Palm handhelds, such as the Palm III shown, and in October 1999 it started email payments.

Importance

Confinity merged in March 2000 with X.com, the company that Elon Musk founded in March 1999. In the second quarter of 2001, online auctions such as eBay supplied approximately 70 percent of the dollar value of PayPal payments. In July 2002 eBay agreed to buy PayPal in a stock deal worth approximately $1.5 billion.

Interesting fact

At the July 1999 launch party, Nokia Ventures used PayPal to send $3 million to Confinity through Peter Thiel's Palm Pilot in approximately five seconds.

Acquisition

eBay · 2002 · $1,500,000,000

Sources

PayPal Puts Dough in Your Palm ↗Wired (Karlin Lillington) · 1999-07-27
PayPal, Inc. registration statement (Form S-1) ↗U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · 2001-09-28
eBay and PayPal merger communication (Form 425) ↗U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · 2002-07-08