Silicon Investor - PayPal Inc. - PYPL

[Thomas M.] What the Hell Happened to PayPal? In 1998, the payments app was created to empo...

Thomas M. — 6/8/2025 9:52:05 AM

What the Hell Happened to PayPal?

In 1998, the payments app was created to empower individuals. Today, it’s a cornerstone of our emerging social-credit system.

By Rupa Subramanya

12.13.22

One by one, they go to start their business day only to find a baffling message from their payments app informing them: “You can no longer do business with PayPal.”

There is little or no explanation. They have somehow offended the sensibilities of someone somewhere deep inside the bureaucracy.

They are simply told via an email from PayPal’s Risk and Compliance Department that, after an internal review, “we decided to permanently limit your account as there was a change in your business model or your business model was considered risky.”

In case there is any doubt, the email adds: “You’ll not be able to conduct any further business using PayPal.”

Then, toward the bottom: “If you have funds in your PayPal balance, we’ll hold it for up to 180 days. After that period, we’ll email you with information on how to access your funds.”

If you’re one of the lucky ones and your account has just been suspended, you can go to customer service, explain your situation and hope that someone gets back to you. If you’ve been banned, you’ll need an attorney to file a subpoena for the internal PayPal documents—simply to learn why you’ve been banned. (Good luck getting unbanned.)

These are entrepreneurs, writers, academics, activists—the very same people PayPal, whose mission is “democratizing financial services,” was meant to empower.

PayPal won’t say how many of them it has suspended or banned. In June 2021, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other civil-liberties groups wrote a letter to PayPal and Venmo, calling on them to open up. So far, they have not, said Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

The people who founded PayPal—the so-called PayPal Mafia—include Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, David Sacks and Max Levchin. All are champions of free speech. All have expressed shock and dismay at what is happening to the company they created. Several founders agreed to talk with The Free Press for this article.

“If the online forms of your money are frozen, that’s like destroying people economically, limiting their ability to exercise their political voice,” Thiel told me. “There’s something about destroying people economically that seems like a far more totalitarian thing.”

When they launched PayPal, in December 1998, the founders imagined themselves connecting people to the global economy by sidestepping the hefty fees charged by credit-card companies and the inflationary policies of poorly run governments. Early PayPal users had Palm Pilots, and they would beam money from their devices to anyone with an email address. It was especially popular among eBay users.

“PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before,” Thiel said at a company meeting, in late 1999. “It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means, because if they try the people will switch to dollars or pounds or yen, in effect, dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure.”

Since those early heady days, PayPal has amassed 429 million active accounts. Fifty-eight percent of Americans use PayPal, and in 2021, there were 19.3 billion PayPal transactions. It now has a market valuation of $84 billion.

But the company that was meant to liberate countless individuals is becoming something else.

Increasingly, it is becoming a police officer. It is deciding what is right and wrong, who gets to be heard, who is silenced. It is locking out of the financial system those people or brands that have slipped outside the parameters of acceptable discourse, those who threaten the consensus of the gatekeepers. The consensus is hard to articulate; it is an ideology lacking clearly defined ideological contours. But the tenets of that consensus are unmistakable: the new progressive politics around race and gender are a force for good, the Covid lockdown was just, the war in Ukraine is noble, and an unfettered exchange of ideas and opinions is an unacceptable threat to all of the above.

[continued ...]

thefp.com

Tom

[Glenn Petersen] Members of the ‘PayPal Mafia’ include tech titans like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, a...

Glenn Petersen — 11/12/2023 5:12:27 AM

Members of the ‘PayPal Mafia’ include tech titans like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman. Here’s where they are now.

Business Insider
November 12, 2023

What do the founders of YouTube, Yelp, Tesla, and LinkedIn have in common? Apart from creating some of the biggest companies in tech, they all share a common résumé line item: they’ve all worked at PayPal.

Many of PayPal’s early employees went on to become major names in tech and the venture capital world, founding, funding, and otherwise developing successful companies. This elite group came to be known as the “ PayPal Mafia,” a nickname that gained popularity after Fortune featured the term in a 2007 piece along with a photo of some of the members dressed in gangster attire.

Members of the group include Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman, along with over a dozen others. Here’s a rundown of the most prominent members of this exclusive group and what they’re up to over two decades later.

Peter Thiel: PayPal’s founder and the so-called “don” of the PayPal Mafia

Peter Thiel cofounded the company that would become Paypal — called Confinity — in 1999 alongside Max Levchin and Luke Nosek. Confinity was launched as a developer of security software for hand-held devices like the PalmPilot, but it later pivoted toward digital money transfers.

Thiel served as CEO of PayPal until October 2002, when eBay acquired the company for $1.5 billion. Thiel’s 3.7% stake was worth a $55 million, according to SEC filings.

Thiel went on to cofound Founders Fund, a venture capital firm that has helped launch companies like SpaceX and Airbnb.

Thiel, now a billionaire with a net worth of over $8 billion, according to Bloomberg, cofounded the big data analysis firm Palantir in 2003. He was the first major outside investor in Facebook and contributed early funding to Yelp and LinkedIn, along with a number of other ventures launched by his PayPal peers. Thiel’s also a partner of Founders Fund, a venture capital fund based in San Francisco.

Thiel has also drawn criticism in recent years for his support of President Donald Trump and for secretly funding Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker Media, which resulted in the company shutting down Gawker and selling the company’s assets. While he’s reportedly taken a break from trying to play political kingmaker, Insider recently reported that Thiel served as an FBI informant.

Max Levchin: PayPal cofounder and Chief Technology Officer.

Max Levchin is sometimes called the “consigliere” of the PayPal Mafia — in “The Godfather,” a consigliere is an advisor to the boss.

Levchin made significant contributions to PayPal’s anti-fraud efforts. Together with PayPal technical architect David Gausebeck, he helped create the Gausebeck-Levchin test, an early version of a CAPTCHA for commercial applications.

Levchin now serves as the CEO of Affirm.

After PayPal was bought by eBay, Levchin founded a media-sharing service called Slide that was later bought by Google. He was also an early investor in Yelp — at one point he was the company’s largest shareholder — and he served as chairman of Yelp from its founding in 2004 until July 2015.

He founded fintech company Affirm, which allows consumers to finance online purchases at the point of sale and pay for them over time. Affirm went public in 2021, raising $1.2 billion in its IPO. Levchin is also the chairman of Glow, a fertility-tracking app that helps users improve their odds of conceiving.

Ken Howery: PayPal cofounder and CFO from 1998 to 2002.

After eBay bought PayPal, Howery stayed on as eBay’s director of corporate development until 2003. After PayPal’s acquisition, he served as cofounder and partner of Founders Fund alongside Peter Thiel.

Howery recently served as US ambassador to Sweden.

He was appointed by former President Trump in January 2019 and confirmed September of that year.

Howery is active in several nonprofits and serves as a founding advisor to Kiva, an organization that facilitates loans to low-income entrepreneurs. Kiva was founded in part by Premal Shah, PayPal’s former product manager.

Howery is reportedly still good friends with Elon Musk.

Elon Musk: founder of (the other) X.com, which merged with Thiel’s Confinity to become PayPal

In 1999, Elon Musk founded a payments company called X.com, which merged with Thiel’s Confinity in 2000. He briefly served as CEO of PayPal before he was ousted by the board in September 2000 and replaced with Thiel. But as the company’s largest shareholder, he still walked away from the PayPal sale to eBay with a cool $165 million.

Musk is currently the world’s richest person, per Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

Perhaps the most well known of all the members of the PayPal mafia now, Musk’s estimated net worth is $209 billion.

Since his PayPal days, Musk has moved on to oversee companies like Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company, and Neuralink. He’s also bought Twitter and renamed it to X, after buying back the X.com domain name from PayPal.

Luke Nosek: PayPal cofounder and vice president of marketing and strategy.

Nosek was also reportedly the person who clued in Peter Thiel to cryogenic preservation, which Thiel has since invested in heavily.

Nosek explored angel investing.

In 2005, Nosek joined Thiel and Howery as a partner at Founders Fund. In 2017, Nosek left Founders Fund to launch investment firm Gigafund, which helped raise money for SpaceX.

Nosek invested in Musk’s SpaceX and was also named a board member. He also joined the board of ResearchGate, a platform where scientists and researchers can ask questions, follow topics, and review one another’s papers.

Roelof Botha: PayPal’s director of corporate development, vice-president of finance, CFO

Botha went to school to be an actuary. He said he never planned to get into tech, but when he saw the opportunity in Silicon Valley, his intuition told him it was where he needed to be.

He started as PayPal’s director of corporate development, went on to become vice-president of finance, and later served as CFO.

Botha is now a partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital

Botha is now considered one of the top tech investors in the world.

Sequoia Capital has has funded tech giants like Apple, Google, YouTube, and Instagram.

Botha as served on the board at more than a dozen companies, including Square, EventBrite, and Weebly, 23andMe, Tumblr, Instagram, and YouTube.

Reid Hoffman: board of directors at PayPal, COO

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman served on the board of directors when PayPal was founded.

He eventually joined the company full-time as PayPal’s COO. In a New York Times interview, Peter Thiel referred to Hoffman as PayPal’s “firefighter in chief,” noting that there were many fires that needed putting out in the company’s early days.

When PayPal was acquired by eBay, Hoffman was the company’s executive vice president.

Hoffman cofounded LinkedIn and is one of Silicon Valley’s most prolific angel investors.

Hoffman was an early investor in Facebook, Flickr, Care.com, and many more. In 2017 he joined the board of Microsoft.

Hoffman has coauthored several books on startups and professional development. He hosts the “Masters of Scale” podcast, on which he interviews founders about how they launched and scaled their companies, and is a partner at VC firm Greylock Partners. He was an early investor in OpenAI and used to serve on its board, and cofounded Inflection AI.

David Sacks: PayPal COO

Like Hoffman, Sacks also served as COO at PayPal. Previously a management consultant for McKinsey & Company, David Sacks joined PayPal in 1999.

After PayPal was bought by eBay, Sacks produced and financed the box office hit “Thank You For Smoking,” which would go on to be nominated for two Golden Globes. In 2006 he founded Geni.com, an online tool for building family trees.

Sacks went on to found several companies and become an angel investor.

In 2016, Sacks was briefly interim CEO at Zenefits, an HR software firm that was plagued by scandal, including allowing unlicensed brokers to sell insurance to its customers. In 2017, Sacks cofounded the early-stage investment firm Craft Ventures.

Sacks is a serial entrepreneur and investor, with angel investments in Airbnb, Postmates, Slack, and many more.

He’s also still a member of Elon Musk’s inner circle.

Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley, and Steve Chen met at PayPal during its early days.

Karim and Chen were engineers, while Hurley was a web designer.

In 2005, the trio launched the video-sharing platform YouTube. Karim uploaded the platform’s very first video, “ Me at the zoo,” an 18-second clip of Karim in front of the San Diego Zoo’s elephant exhibit. It’s been viewed over 292 million times.

Today, Karim, Hurley, and Chen remain active entrepreneurs and investors with a hand in projects from finance to music.

Karim launched venture fund YVentures in 2008, through which he invested in Palantir, Reddit, Eventbrite, and Airbnb.

Hurley stepped down as CEO of YouTube in 2010. Since then, he’s backed education startup Uptime and invested in several sports teams.

Chen invested in actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s musical collaboration platform HitRecord, which in February secured $6.4 million in Series A funding.

Andrew McCormack: assistant to Peter Thiel at PayPal

McCormack joined PayPal in 2001, working as an assistant to Peter Thiel as the company prepared for its IPO.

In 2003, McCormack started a restaurant group in San Francisco. In 2008, he joined Thiel Capital and worked there for 5 years.

McCormack went on to launch VC firm Valar Ventures

McCormack partnered up with Thiel again in 2010 to found Valar Ventures, a venture capital fund.

Valar Ventures has invested in technology startups well beyond Silicon Valley, including some in Europe and Canada. In August, Crunchbase reported the firm had closed on a $150 million funding round for a new venture capital fund, Valar Fund V.

McCormack continues to serve as a managing partner of the firm.

Keith Rabois: PayPal’s executive vice president

Entrepreneur Keith Rabois served as PayPal’s executive vice president from 2000 to 2002.

He would go on to join his PayPal colleague Reid Hoffman at LinkedIn as its vice president for business and corporate development from 2005 to 2007. He was an early investor in startups like Square, where he spent two-and-a-half years as COO.

Rabois joined Thiel, Howery, and Nosek as a partner at Founders Fund.

Rabois serves as CEO at OpenStore and is a general partner at Founder’s Fund. He’s also served on the board of directors for Yelp, Xoom, and Reddit.

Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman: worked on technology at PayPal.

Simmons was an engineer and Stoppelman was the vice president of technology after joining PayPal from X.com.

In 2004, the pair came up with the idea for a platform where users could leave recommendations about businesses in their area. They pitched the idea to Levchin, who provided an early investment of $1 million, and Yelp was born.

Simmons left his official role at Yelp in 2010, while Stoppelman continues to serve as Yelp’s CEO.

Simmons served as CTO at Yelp from 2004 until he left the role in 2010. Stoppelman is still CEO of Yelp, and has publicly spoken out in support of political issues like women’s reproductive rights.

Jack Selby: PayPal’s vice president of corporate and international development.

After leaving PayPal, Selby partnered with Thiel to start Clarium Capital Management.

In 2017, Selby was revealed to be the generous tipper behind “Tips for Jesus.”

Selby later helped manage Thiel Capital, the Thiel’s family office, and started his own venture capital fund, AZ-VC, where he serves as managing partner. He still serves as managing director at Thiel Capital.

Starting in 2013, Selby began anonymously leaving tips for unsuspecting waitstaff, ranging into the thousands, and signing them “Tips for Jesus.” His identity was confirmed by a New York City bartender who served him prior to receiving a $5,000 tip.

Dave McClure: PayPal’s director of marketing

McClure served PayPal’s director of marketing as for four years beginning in 2001.

According to McClure’s LinkedIn, he began a program called the PayPal Developer Network, which consisted of about 300,000 developers that were using PayPal.

McClure left PayPal in 2004.

He had a brief stint at Founders Fund before launching 500 Startups, an early stage venture fund. McClure stayed at 500 Startups until June 2017, when he was accused of “inappropriate behavior with women” in a New York Times report and stepped down from his role at the firm, writing an apology post titled “I’m a creep. I’m sorry.”

He’s since become an investor and owner in a professional sports league for ultimate frisbee and cofounded Practical Venture Capital, according to his LinkedIn.

Several more former PayPal employees went on to have careers both in and out of tech.

The post Members of the ‘PayPal Mafia’ include tech titans like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman. Here’s where they are now. appeared first on Business Insider.

Members of the ‘PayPal Mafia’ include tech titans like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman. Here’s where they are now. – DNyuz

[Glenn Petersen] PayPal Launches a Stablecoin in Latest Crypto Payments Push -- PayPal USD will ...

Glenn Petersen — 8/7/2023 10:17:15 AM

PayPal Launches a Stablecoin in Latest Crypto Payments Push

-- PayPal USD will be pegged to dollar, issued by Paxos Trust

-- Stablecoins have yet to take off in consumer-payment sector

By Anna Irrera
Bloomberg
August 7, 2023 at 12:50 PM UTC

PayPal Holdings Inc. is rolling out a stablecoin, the first by a large financial company and a potentially significant boost to the sluggish adoption of digital tokens for payments.

PayPal USD (PYUSD) is issued by Paxos Trust Co. and fully backed by US dollar deposits, short-term Treasuries and similar cash equivalents, the San Jose, California-based payments company said on Monday. It’s pegged to the dollar and will be gradually available to PayPal’s customers in the US.

With PYUSD, Chief Executive Officer Dan Schulman is seeking to cement PayPal’s dominance in digital payments by leaning on technology that enables instant and lower-cost transfers without a central intermediary. PayPal shares have slumped more than 35% in the past 12 months, the sixth-worst performer on the Nasdaq 100 Index, as the pandemic-era surge in online payments abated.

“The vision over time is that this becomes a part of the overall payments infrastructure,“ Schulman, who’s preparing to step down in coming months, said in an interview.

Stablecoins — crypto tokens that are pegged to an asset like the dollar — have been around for almost a decade, but they’re mostly used by traders to move digital assets between exchanges and have made limited inroads into consumer payments. There’s roughly $126 billion worth of stablecoins in circulation, according to CoinGecko, the biggest by far being Tether Holdings Ltd.’s USDT.

Some have been controversial: A high-profile attempt by Meta Inc. unraveled last year after an intense regulatory backlash. PayPal itself paused work on PYUSD in February as regulators stepped up scrutiny of cryptocurrencies.

The company now believes the regulatory environment is “progressing toward more clarity” and sees rising demand for an alternative stablecoin because of how concentrated the market is, Jose Fernandez da Ponte, head of PayPal’s blockchain and digital currencies team, said in an interview.

PYUSD is designed to be redeemable for dollars at all times and can also be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies available on PayPal’s network. It can be used to fund purchases and will soon be available on PayPal’s popular payments app Venmo. Users will eventually be able to send their token holdings between a PayPal and a Venmo wallet.

The coin can also be moved to compatible third-party wallets outside the PayPal network.

Instant Transfers

PayPal, which has more than 431 million active accounts globally, first launched cryptocurrency services in 2020. It allows users to buy, sell and make payments in a handful of tokens like Bitcoin through its platform.

The company last week said it had to set aside more money in the second quarter to cover souring loans it had made to merchants, triggering a 12% one-day rout in its shares. PayPal has expanded the services it offers to the millions of consumers and merchants on its many platforms, including working-capital loans and remittances.

Initially, PayPal expects PYUSD to be used mainly in the cryptocurrency and web3 sectors, like for trading in and out of other digital tokens and in-game payments, before gradually gaining adoption in areas like remittances and micro-payments.

Proponents of stablecoins have long argued that they’re a superior means of achieving cheap, instant money transfers and payments. But they’ve also faced opposition from central banks who are busy developing their own digital currencies and, in the case of USDT, speculation about the quality of reserves.

Paxos’s BUSD Setback

In perhaps the most high-profile setback for stablecoins, one called TerraUSD imploded in May 2022 when the complex algorithmic system backing it failed, triggering a wider crash in cryptocurrencies. Its inventor, South Korean citizen Do Kwon, has been charged with fraud by US prosecutors, who say the episode cost investors roughly $40 billion.

“The past year’s events have cast serious doubts on the ability of stablecoins to function as money,” Agustin Carstens, the head of the Bank for International Settlements, said in a speech in February. “Stablecoins must import their credibility from sovereign fiat currencies.”

In February, the New York State Department of Financial Services said it had directed Paxos to stop issuing a stablecoin branded by crypto exchange Binance known as BUSD. The New York regulator said at the time that its decision was the result of “several unresolved issues related to Paxos’s oversight of its relationship with Binance.
”
Paxos is subject to regulatory oversight by NYDFS, and PYUSD will be a regulated product in the state of New York. PayPal was granted a local crypto license by the regulator in June last year.

PayPal held extensive discussions with US regulators and policymakers as it prepared to introduce PYUSD, Schulman said. “We are in a place right now in these conversations that people feel comfortable with a respected, well-regulated US financial entity moving into the stablecoin space and think that it’s an important initial move,” he said.

Starting in September, Paxos will publish monthly reports detailing the assets backing PYUSD, PayPal said. Paxos will also publish a third-party attestation by an accounting firm on PYUSD’s reserve assets.

— With Emily Nicolle and Sidhartha Shukla

PayPal Launches US Dollar Stablecoin PYUSD for Payments, Transfers - Bloomberg (archive.ph)

[Glenn Petersen] PayPal Hits the Reset Button Company deeply cut its 2022 guidance, but shares c...

Glenn Petersen — 4/30/2022 5:08:42 AM

PayPal Hits the Reset Button

Company deeply cut its 2022 guidance, but shares could now stabilize as investors look toward the next big things in digital finance

By Telis Demos
Wall Street Journal
April 28, 2022 11:36 am ET

The comedown for PayPal’s PYPL -4.52% once-highflying stock has been harsh, but a reset of expectations could cushion its landing.

PayPal said Wednesday that supply-chain disruptions hitting e-commerce sales, plus a normalization of the mix of spending in-store and virtually, are continuing to make it hard to forecast its business. So the company is making sharp cuts to its guidance for 2022. That includes net revenue growth being about 4 percentage points slower than previously forecast, now at about 11% to 13%. It is also withdrawing its medium-term guidance.

The good news for the stock is that expectations were already substantially reduced after the company flagged a strategic pivot earlier this year. The reset of guidance may actually be an entry point for some investors back into the stock.

Alongside many fintechs, PayPal shares had plunged 56% so far in 2022 through Wednesday’s close. At the new, lower guidance for 2022 adjusted earnings per share, and after a more than 3% gain in the stock on Thursday morning, PayPal is now trading around 22 times forward earnings. That multiple is still historically quite low. Even before the pandemic, from 2017 to 2019, the company typically traded well north of 30 times analysts’ forward estimates, according to FactSet data.

One thing that might help the company earn back a higher multiple is that growth may soon resemble its prepandemic pace, especially as the company gets further away from the end of its prior eBay relationship. The midpoint of the updated guidance already implies more than 15% growth in the second half of 2022. That could approximate or exceed the revenue growth rate in 2019. Given that the company says it is building in a worsening macroeconomic environment into the forecast, any positive surprises to the backdrop could now set the stock up for gains.

There are of course some big differences to 2019, too. One is that there might now be slower growth ahead in the overall global e-commerce market than there was back then, since so much expansion happened during the pandemic. Though with a focus on fast-growing merchants, PayPal can still exceed market growth. For example, its Braintree online payment-processing business grew volume 61% year-over-year in the first quarter.

In addition to payments growth, the pandemic may have likewise pulled forward growth in the number of PayPal accounts. After adding over 120 million net new active accounts over 2020 and 2021, PayPal now anticipates adding about 10 million in 2022—half of the top end of its prior guidance for the year, and about a quarter of what it added back in 2019. Partly this is by design, as PayPal lets users who rarely transact churn off, arguing that spending to keep them isn’t a high-return investment.

That sets the stage for PayPal to focus more intensely on increasing revenue from customers and merchants it already actively engages. Though there are many players fiercely competing in different components of digital payments and commerce, PayPal has a broad and global platform: It can offer payment processing, digital wallets, buy-now-pay-later, discounts and rewards, remittances, online savings accounts, bill payments, peer-to-peer payments, cash-back credit cards, cryptocurrencies, and far more. It is also still throwing off billions in cash to fuel further acquisitions or investment.

So, whatever drives the next leg of growth in digital finance for a consumer or business, PayPal will very likely be there. But PayPal shares may not fly so high again until those next catalysts come into sharper focus.

Write to Telis Demos at telis.demos@wsj.com

PayPal Hits the Reset Button - WSJ

[Sr K] WSJ version PayPal Shares Tumble After Disappointing Outlook Payments giant ci...

Sr K — 2/2/2022 12:34:27 PM

WSJ version

PayPal Shares Tumble After Disappointing Outlook

Payments giant cited effect of inflation on personal spending in tempering its growth outlook for the year

PayPal has disappointed investors for the second quarter in a row.PHOTO: GABBY JONES/BLOOMBERG NEWS

By
Peter Rudegeair Follow

and
Caitlin Ostroff Follow

Updated Feb. 2, 2022 10:10 am ET

PayPal Holdings Inc. PYPL -26.04% shares headed toward their worst one-day performance on record after the company lowered its profit outlook for 2022 and walked back an ambitious growth strategy it put in place last year.

PayPal shares sank 24% Wednesday morning, erasing tens of billions of dollars in market value. For much of 2020 and 2021, PayPal was an investor favorite as the migration to online shopping over the course of the pandemic boosted its transaction volumes and profits, sending its market capitalization higher than all U.S. banks except JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Investor sentiment started to sour last fall as lockdown measures eased. After Wednesday’s drop, PayPal’s stock is back to its level from May 2020.

Executives said a number of forces will pressure its business in 2022. Those include the runoff in government stimulus packages, labor shortages, the Omicron variant, inflation and supply-chain issues. It is also losing business from one of its biggest customer sources— eBay Inc. —faster than expected because the online marketplace is building out its own payments arm.

In a surprise to analysts and investors, PayPal also abandoned a target it established last year of roughly doubling its active user base to 750 million accounts. Chief Executive Dan Schulman said the focus now was on getting frequent PayPal users to use its services more often and not on pursuing customers that are unlikely to transact with PayPal regularly.

“You can officially add PayPal to your list of pandemic highfliers that are experiencing a quite bumpy landing,” wrote MoffettNathanson analyst Lisa Ellis in a research note.

For 2022, PayPal expects to generate adjusted earnings per share of roughly $4.67, well below the $5.21 consensus estimate of analysts polled by FactSet. PayPal also forecast revenue growth of 15% to 17%, less than the 18% growth figure the company released a few months ago, which investors then viewed as a disappointment.

“Our medium-term targets simply did not contemplate inflation at a 40-year high and supply chain issues not seen in my lifetime,” Chief Financial Officer John Rainey said on the earnings conference call. “As such, 2022 is now off to a slower start than we previously anticipated and we are taking a more conservative stance on the year.”

Exc.

[Glenn Petersen] PayPal stock plunges on weak earnings guidance PUBLISHED TUE, FEB 1 20224:28 PM...

Glenn Petersen — 2/2/2022 7:03:25 AM

PayPal stock plunges on weak earnings guidance

PUBLISHED TUE, FEB 1 20224:28 PM EST
UPDATED TUE, FEB 1 20229:21 PM EST
Lauren Feiner @LAUREN_FEINER
Kate Rooney @KR00NEY
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- PayPal reported mixed Q4 2021 earnings Tuesday and provided guidance for the next quarter that fell short of analyst estimates.

-- The company expects Q1 non-GAAP earnings per share of 87 cents, short of the $1.16 analysts anticipated.

-- It also reported weak full year revenue growth guidance for 2022.

PayPal shares fell more than 17% after hours on Tuesday after reporting mixed results and Q1 guidance that fell below analyst estimates.

Here are the key numbers:

Earnings per share: $1.11 per share, ex-items vs. $1.12 per share expected, according to a Refinitiv survey of analysts

Revenue: $6.92 billion vs. $6.87 billion expected, according to Refinitiv

The company expects first-quarter non-GAAP earnings per share of 87 cents, short of the $1.16 analysts anticipated.

PayPal forecast revenue to grow about 15% to 17% for the full year 2022, on a spot and foreign-currency-neutral basis. Analysts had expected year-over-year revenue growth for 2022 to be 17.9%.

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman told CNBC that the company took “a measured approach” to guidance but revenue should accelerate in the second half of the year.

“We’ve got the eBay transition to work our way through. This transition is hiding some of the underlying strength of the business,” Schulman said, adding that eBay put $1.4 billion of revenue pressure on the company last year, and should be closer to $600 million this year. By the third quarter, PayPal won’t have to adjust results for eBay.

The dot-com-era tech giant acquired PayPal twenty years ago to handle payments for its website. In 2015, the two companies split and eBay has been slowly transitioning to its own payment system, and off from PayPal.

Schulman also blamed “exogenous factors” like inflation weighing on consumer spending among parts of PayPal’s userbase, and supply chain issues “disproportionately impacting” cross-border payments, especially out of China.

Slower user growth, too

PayPal’s user numbers, measured by net new active accounts, also missed the company’s prior targets.

The lower total was in part due to 4.5 million “illegitimate” accounts that joined the platform during incentive-based campaigns. Finance and tech companies often offer perks, such as cash bonuses, to drive users to their apps. But CFO John Rainey said in this case, millions of new accounts were excluded from quarterly user growth.

While the number was immaterial to PayPal’s customer base of 426 million “it affected our ability to achieve our guidance in the quarter,” Rainey said.

“We regularly assess our active account base to ensure the accounts are legitimate,” he said on the fourth-quarter earnings call. “This is particularly important during incentive campaigns, that can be targets for bad actors attempting to reap the benefit from these offers without ever having an intent to be a legitimate customer of our platform.”

PayPal said it expects to add 15 million to 20 million new accounts this year and walked back its goal of 750 million total accounts set by the company last year.

“Moving forward, we will continue to grow our users, but our focus will be on sustainable growth and driving engagement,” Rainey said. “To be very clear, this is a choice on our part. We could increase our spin and accelerate our net new active trajectory. However, we believe there are better ways to achieve our financial results.”

PayPal (PYPL) Q4 2021 earnings (cnbc.com)

[John Hayman] Ouch !! PayPal earnings topped views while revenue and total payment volume mis...

John Hayman — 11/9/2021 10:36:30 AM

Ouch !!

PayPal earnings topped views while revenue and total payment volume missed estimates amid lowered expectations. PayPal stock dived.

PayPal Stock Dives Despite Amazon Deal As Fiscal 2022 Revenue Guidance Misses (yahoo.com)

John

[John Hayman] For what it's worth. The Fool on the deal with Pinterest. John youtu.be

John Hayman — 10/29/2021 3:44:12 PM

[Glenn Petersen] PayPal says it’s not looking to buy Pinterest right now; shares jump 6% PayPal ...

Glenn Petersen — 10/25/2021 7:12:08 AM

PayPal says it’s not looking to buy Pinterest right now; shares jump 6%

PayPal says it is not about to buy Pinterest (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] You're not the only one. Neither do I. The market agrees with us. PPYPL down 5%...

Glenn Petersen — 10/20/2021 5:59:24 PM

You're not the only one. Neither do I.

The market agrees with us. PPYPL down 5% today.

[John Hayman] Why are they buying Pinterest ? I don't get it. John

John Hayman — 10/20/2021 1:44:06 PM

[Glenn Petersen] Pinterest shares soar following report PayPal may buy it PUBLISHED WED, OCT 20 ...

Glenn Petersen — 10/20/2021 12:39:11 PM

Pinterest shares soar following report PayPal may buy it

PUBLISHED WED, OCT 20 202111:29 AM EDT
UPDATED 10 MIN AGO
Jessica Bursztynsky @JBURSZ
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- Shares of Pinterest soared Wednesday morning on a report PayPal may acquire the social media company.

-- The company’s stock was halted twice.

-- PayPal has discussed acquiring the company for a potential price of around $70 a share, which would value Pinterest at about $39 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Shares of Pinterest soared Wednesday morning on a Bloomberg report that PayPal may acquire the social media company.

The company’s stock was halted twice, before gaining about 9% as of midday. PayPal, meanwhile, dipped more than 3% on the news.

PayPal and Pinterest declined to comment.

PayPal has discussed acquiring the company for a potential price of around $70 a share, which would value Pinterest at about $39 billion, according to Bloomberg. Pinterest stock closed at $55.58 per share on Tuesday.

Pinterest went public in April 2019, where it was valued at just more than $10 billion.

PayPal has largely benefited from the boom in online shopping since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Last year, it pitted itself against the growing buy-now-pay-later companies with its “ Pay in 4” offering. A potential acquisition of Pinterest could push the company into social commerce, a growing space that other tech giants are already working on.

Facebook, for example, has heavily pushed into making Instagram shoppable. Last summer, it began testing a dedicated “Shop” tab on its home screen. It also lets users shop through regular Instagram posts, Live, Stories and its Explore feed, and has tested shopping on its short-form video feature Reels.

Social commerce lets companies track clicks and purchases within their respective apps, so they can prove the effectiveness of ads to advertisers. It also could allow the companies to receive a cut of each transaction.

Pinterest shares soar following report PayPal may buy it (cnbc.com)

[BigMacAttack] Still the best way to pay online IMO. Without Paypal, internet shopping wouldn't...

BigMacAttack — 8/31/2021 11:07:11 AM

Still the best way to pay online IMO. Without Paypal, internet shopping wouldn't be what it is today.

[Glenn Petersen] PayPal is exploring a stock-trading platform for its U.S. customers PUBLISHED ...

Glenn Petersen — 8/30/2021 12:42:07 PM

PayPal is exploring a stock-trading platform for its U.S. customers

PUBLISHED MON, AUG 30 202111:44 AM EDT
UPDATED 49 MIN AGO
Kate Rooney @KR00NEY
CNBC.com

KEY POINTS

-- PayPal is exploring ways to let users trade individual stocks, according to two sources familiar with the plan, and public details around a new executive hire.

-- As part of that expansion, the payment giant hired a brokerage industry veteran to lead “Invest at PayPal” -- a previously unreported division of the payments giant.

-- The move comes amid a retail trading boom that brought millions of new investors into the stock market, and more regulatory scrutiny for some brokerage firms.

PayPal is exploring a possible stock-trading platform.

After rolling out the ability to trade cryptocurrencies last year, the payments giant has been exploring ways to let users trade individual stocks, according to two sources familiar with the plans, and public details around a new executive hire.

The San Jose, California-based company recently hired brokerage industry veteran Rich Hagen as part of that move. After leaving Ally Invest, Hagen is now the CEO of a previously unreported division of PayPal called “Invest at PayPal,” according to his LinkedIn page. Hagen was the co-founder of online brokerage TradeKing, which was bought by Ally Invest.

His current job description outlines PayPal’s efforts to “explore opportunities” in the consumer investment business. When reached for comment, PayPal pointed CNBC to CEO Dan Schulman’s comments at the company’s investor day in February where he spoke about the long-term vision for the company and how it may include many more financial services, including “investment capabilities.”

PayPal’s move comes amid a retail trading renaissance. More than 10 million new individual investors have entered the market in the first half of this year, roughly matching last year’s record level, according to estimates from JMP Securities. A combination of stay at home orders during the pandemic, government stimulus checks and viral events like the rise of GameStop in January have spurred on new interest in the stock market.

Trading has become a booming business for the companies that offer it. PayPal rival Square offers stock and cryptocurrency trading through the Square Cash App, and its CFO has said it drives engagement and revenue per user. Robinhood, which went public earlier this summer, has seen explosive growth with more than 22.5 million customers and doubled revenue from a year ago in the most recent quarter.

In order to offer stock trading to customers, it’s possible PayPal partners with or buys an existing broker-dealer as part of this plan. According to one source, PayPal has held already discussions with potential industry partners.

Still, one source familiar said it was unlikely that the trading service would roll out this year.

Shares of PayPal jumped more than 3% following the CNBC report, while Robinhood shares lost more than 3%.

If PayPal did look to get full approval as a brokerage firm alone, it would need to complete a new membership process through the industry’s main regulator, FINRA. That process could take more than eight months. PayPal has more than 400 million accounts worldwide.

A PayPal stock-trading launch would come at competitive time for the fintech industry. Square, PayPal, Robinhood, SoFi offer a list of overlapping products and describe the same mission of being a one-stop-shop for finance. Cryptocurrency and stock trading are seen as ways to keep consumers engaged on these payment platforms.

While helpful for user growth and revenue, the retail trading boom has also invited more regulatory scrutiny.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said last week that it was stepping up its inquiry into “gamification” and how they use technology to interact with their customers. The agency mentioned behavioral prompts used by online brokerages and investment advisors that may encourage investors to trade more stocks and other securities and take on more risks.

PayPal is looking to launch a stock-trading platform for its customers (cnbc.com)

[Glenn Petersen] PayPal CEO Dan Schulman: Cryptocurrency Is the Real Deal. And the Superapps Are ...

Glenn Petersen — 4/25/2021 3:51:36 PM

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman: Cryptocurrency Is the Real Deal. And the Superapps Are Coming.

BY EBEN SHAPIRO
Time Magazine
APRIL 25, 2021 6:50 AM EDT

Dan Schulman, president and CEO of PayPal, at the company's offices in San Jose, Calif., in 2016.
Robyn Twomey—Redux
---------------------------

(Miss this week’s The Leadership Brief? This interview below was delivered to the inbox of Leadership Brief subscribers on Sunday morning, April 25; to receive weekly emails of conversations with the world’s top CEOs and business decisionmakers, click here.)

Like many CEOs on the West Coast, Dan Schulman has a sort of a uniform: blue jeans, black sweater and ostrich-skin cowboy boots. When it came time to replace his boots, Schulman, the CEO of PayPal, used one of the company’s new services to make the purchase. With a few clicks, in a few seconds, he bought the boots and paid for them with Bitcoin. “ Boom,” he says. “It was pretty cool.”

The fintech giant had a record year as the pandemic drove shoppers from stores. Instead, they bought groceries, movies and underwear on their phones and computers. PayPal does business in more than 200 countries and deals in more than 100 currencies. It did a staggering amount of business last year, processing transactions at a rate of 1,000 per second during the peak holiday shopping season. In total, PayPal processed 15.4 billion payments, with a value of $936 billion last year. PayPal also had the most new product launches in its history, including launching QR-code payments in 20 markets around the world in response to demand for germ-free transactions. Another big initiative: helping move digital currency into the mainstream, by adding cryptocurrency services. Schulman recently joined TIME for a conversation on the future of cash, central banks and the security of digital currency.

(This interview is edited and condensed for clarity.)

How much did fear of infection during the pandemic drive lasting changes in how people shop and pay for things?

There were two things that dramatically accelerated the trend of digital payments by as little as three years and maybe as much as five years. And by the way, that’s just continuing to grow at an accelerating rate. The first is, we had no choice. We were all quarantined in our homes. We needed to live. We needed to buy things, and everybody had to buy things online. Eventually that turned from this necessity to convenience. People realized, you don’t have to wait in line at a cashier; it can be delivered whenever you want, you have more choice, more different deals.

No. 2 is everything started to go digital, even in-store, because of hygiene. People wanted to be sure that they could protect their cashiers, and customers wanted to be sure that they were going to be safe. Nobody wanted to touch cash, and that led to a large increase in use of digital forms to not just pay, but to look at menus and to look at offers and that kind of thing in stores.

What does your business look like in the next five to 10 years?

First of all, retail fundamentally changes. It moves from a strategy of, How do I attract people to my storefront?, to basically, How do I optimize for home delivery? How do I optimize around all things digital, online and offline? Effectively the differentiation between those two things disappears. And that means that retailers need to think about, Where do they meet consumers? Consumers aren’t just going to go to their website. They’re going to be in large consumer platforms like TikTok or PayPal or others. The reason Walmart wanted to buy part of TikTok is they wanted to kind of put shopping into that platform. We call it contextual commerce.

It’s the same thing inside PayPal. We know that people will start to utilize wish-list shopping tools, and wish lists are really a form of creating an individualized demand curve. This is what you want. This is the price point that you want it; retailer, if you can give me that, I’ll buy it. And so retailers are coming to where you are looking individually, personalizing offers to you. Retail is going to shift dramatically.

And how are we going to pay for things?

There are probably going to be six to 10 superapps that evolve. You won’t have 50 apps on your phone, because you can’t remember 50 usernames and passwords; you don’t want to put in your financial information into every single one of them; you can’t remember the nav system on all of them. These superapps that will basically intermediate other apps, so you log in once, you have a common password, you have all of your data and information in one place that can be used to feed products and services on that platform. It will make it simpler and easier for the consumer.

So cash is no longer king?

Ten years from now, you will see a tremendous decline in the use of cash. All form factors of payment will collapse into the mobile phone. Credit cards as a form factor will go away, and you will use your phone because a phone can add much more value than just tapping your credit card. And so when all of those things start to happen, then central banks need to rethink monetary policy as well, because you can’t just issue more paper money into the system because people aren’t using paper money. And so this is the advent of digital currencies.

What does this pending shift to digital currencies mean for the financial system as we know it?

In the next five to 10 years, you’re going to see more change in the financial system than you have over the past 10 to 20 years. How do we think about modernizing the existing financial infrastructure? It needs modernization, because it’s inefficient today. If you cash a check, it can take three days for you to get your money. If you do an international remittance, it can take seven days to get your money. And it’s too expensive. The “take rate” across the financial system throughout the world is about 2.8%. For the last 10 years, which, by the way, you’d expect with volume and technological improvements that would drop, but the worst part about the 2.8% is that if you have less income, or are outside of the system, and you’re not affluent, then that take rate is like 1,000 basis points; it’s not 280 basis points. And if you’re really affluent, the take rate is 25 basis points. And so, when you think about it being expensive, exclusionary and efficient, we really need to start to think about, How do you modernize that system? Is there a way that you can do things more efficiently, with less cost, more inclusively, and add more utility into the system?

What is the difference between Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from central bank–issued digital currencies?

Central bank–issued digital currencies can also take advantage of distributed ledger technology [DLT] or other modern technologies, but they’re basically digitizing a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar. A digital dollar would be fully backed by the U.S. government, but done in a digital fashion, and that might allow the government to open up Fed funding to other institutions besides banks, potentially companies like PayPal, where you could fund straight from the Fed right into a digital wallet. You wouldn’t have to send out stimulus checks in the mail—just go directly into their digital wallet through a digital currency, instantaneous access, no cost and friction.

Demand on the crypto side has been multiple-fold to what we initially expected. There's a lot of excitement.- DAN SCHULMAN, CEO OF PAYPAL

You’ve taken a very deliberate approach to digital currency, investing heavily before introducing a consumer product. Why now?

We’ve been looking at digital forms of currency and DLT for six years or so. But I thought it was early, and I thought the cryptocurrencies at the time were much more assets than they were currency. They were too volatile to be a viable currency. And it was still a little bit too much of people not really understanding what they were going to get into, and what we really wanted to do is make sure that it became a little more mainstream so that we would work hand in hand with regulators before we put anything out into the market.
What’s the demand been like for these new services?

Demand on the crypto side has been multiple-fold to what we initially expected. There’s a lot of excitement. How do we defend against more and more sophisticated cybercrime as all our assets move to digital?

We need to battle cyber in two ways. One, you have to create wide moats and high towers and turrets to try and keep as many bad people out as possible. But it’s impossible to keep bad people out because usernames and passwords are stolen. So the real trick of this is how do you keep data from moving outside. So if you make a transaction [using PayPal], it’s not your username and password that’s giving you permission to do that. It is 130 different variables that we look at on every single transaction, in milliseconds, to be sure that it’s you. It’s this idea of Big Data of really understanding who you are, not who you said you are. Things like two-factor authentication, that’s grade-school stuff. It needs to be much, much more sophisticated than that, and we’ve spent as much as we need to spend to ensure that we do our very best to not allow data to leave our system that isn’t valid. But I will say this for every company around the world: this is an issue that should be front and center.

When did you decide on your look?

I don’t really call it a look. I call it very comfortable. I started this when I was running Virgin Mobile, a long time ago. I’ve been wearing cowboy boots forever. I’ve been wearing jeans and like a black sweater forever. Some people say, “Oh, you went to Silicon Valley.” No, no. This was me way before then.

Story Link

[Green Receipt] I do get frustrated with their UI though. the help documents are almost always...

Green Receipt — 4/12/2021 11:16:04 PM

I do get frustrated with their UI though. the help documents are almost always out of sync with the functionality of their site. I have both a business account and a personal account with them.

I was using paypal here with one of their card readers so I could do POS transactions, but one day i got a message that said the software needed to be upgraded. after the upgrade the reader quit working. Pay pal wanted me to spend $150 for a new card reader.

That was a lousy experience, so now i just direct invoice customers and the customer on their end can hand enter the credit card or however on their own.

[John Hayman] 171,000 people joined PayPal every day in 2020 on average. Market cap is now 3...

John Hayman — 2/15/2021 3:14:06 PM

171,000 people joined PayPal every day in 2020 on average.
Market cap is now 350 B
Ebay market cap is now 42 B
American Ex market cap is now 104
Just saying.
John

[John Hayman] PayPal on the New E-commerce Trends That Are Here to Stay finance.yahoo.com

John Hayman — 12/16/2020 4:23:03 PM

[John Hayman] It's down, it's up. GoPYPL John Earnings report came out. What happenedThe sto...

John Hayman — 11/3/2020 11:18:25 AM

It's down, it's up.
GoPYPL
John

Earnings report came out.

What happenedThe stock market was having a strong rally on Election Day, with all three major averages higher by at least 1% at 9:45 a.m. EST Tuesday. However, fintech giant PayPal Holdings ( NASDAQ:PYPL) was moving in the opposite direction, with shares down by about 5% shortly after the market opened.

So whatPayPal reported its third-quarter earnings after the market closed on Monday, and the results were quite strong. Revenue soared by 25% year over year and the company posted $1.07 in adjusted EPS, an impressive 41% increase. And PayPal had 361 million active accounts at the end of September, adding more than 15 million during the third quarter alone.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/11/03/heres-why-paypal-stock-is-falling-on-tuesday/

[Following-Mr.Pink] Thoughts on the potential Bitgo acquisition? bloomberg.com PayPal Holdings Inc...

Following-Mr.Pink — 10/23/2020 4:03:28 PM

Thoughts on the potential Bitgo acquisition?

bloomberg.com

PayPal Holdings Inc. is exploring acquisitions of cryptocurrency companies including Bitcoin custodian BitGo Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would expand its embrace of digital coins.

PayPal has been holding talks with BitGo, a company that helps investors store Bitcoin securely, and could reach a deal within weeks, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. Talks could still fall apart and PayPal could opt to buy other targets, the people added.

It couldn’t be learned how much PayPal would pay for BitGo if it goes ahead with the deal. BitGo raised $58.5 million in 2018 at a $170 million valuation, according to PitchBook.

Representatives for BitGo and PayPal declined to comment.

Palo Alto, California-based BitGo was founded in 2013 by Chief Executive Officer Mike Belshe. It offers digital wallets that require multiple signatures for transactions, as well as offline vaults for storing Bitcoin and rival currencies. It was one of the first companies in the space to focus on institutional investors, according to its website.

The company applied in August to New York regulators to become an independent, regulated qualified custodian under New York State Banking Law, a press release showed. Custodians are responsible for safekeeping digital assets using secure storage.

PayPal announced on Wednesday that its customers can buy, sell and hold cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin from digital wallets, as well as use the virtual money to shop at the 26 million merchants on its network. The announcement led Bitcoin to surge past $13,000 for the first time since July 2019.

PayPal said it would partner with BitGo competitor Paxos Trust Company, a regulated provider of cryptocurrency products and services for its new service.

BitGo is backed by investors including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Craft Ventures, Digital Currency Group, DRW, Galaxy Digital Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Valor Equity Partners and Founders Fund.

[John Hayman] Another new high. John finance.yahoo.com PayPal to let you buy and sell cryptoc...

John Hayman — 10/21/2020 2:46:26 PM

Another new high.
John

finance.yahoo.com
PayPal to let you buy and sell cryptocurrencies in the US

[John Hayman] PayPal is expanding, and I assume they would be looking to get some assets chea...

John Hayman — 8/24/2020 9:13:55 AM

PayPal is expanding, and I assume they would be looking to get some assets cheap. It's possible, but I don't have any info that I could say for certain.

PayPal is my first investment into financial stocks, over a year ago. . It has been a great investment for me so far.

Not much action on this board. If you get any info about this subject I would be happy to hear what you have found.
Good luck.
John

[Green Receipt] I have no holding in PayPal at the moment. I was researching it this weekend to...

Green Receipt — 8/23/2020 10:11:56 PM

I have no holding in PayPal at the moment.

I was researching it this weekend to consider for a buy and found out about WireCard.

I've never heard of Wirecard but apparently Wirecard is now closed because 2 billion euros are missing?
then the article goes on to say that the missing money was never there.

I probably got that wrong. But what I was wondering is why did a news report get issued somewhat recently that talked about PayPal buying (potentially) some of the assets of wirecard?

a little further digging suggests paypal possibly had some deals with wirecard
a post
and a bunch of posts

apparently the wirecard issue goes further back

whats your current feel on the buy worthiness of paypal and where does wirecard fit into the equation?

[John Hayman] The antitrust probes just opened up by the EU against Apple ( AAPL) - Get Repo...

John Hayman — 6/18/2020 2:53:00 PM

The antitrust probes just opened up by the EU against Apple ( AAPL) - Get Report probably won’t do enormous financial damage to the tech giant. But companies such as Netflix ( NFLX) - Get Report, Spotify ( SPOT) - Get Report, Amazon.com ( AMZN) - Get Report, Match Group ( MTCH) - Get Report and PayPal ( PYPL) - Get Report are still likely pleased to see them announced.

thestreet.com

John

[Green Receipt] yeah it was short lived. My guess is a developer messed up and it took them a...

Green Receipt — 6/4/2020 1:08:43 PM

yeah it was short lived. My guess is a developer messed up and it took them about 30 - 40 minutes to correct the problem.

The issue is, if one has a big public market and with hacking so rampant, one should test software before going live in production.

What caught my attention was when I went to login, it wasn't what I expected to see. Which made me then go back and examine all sorts of stuff to make sure I wasn't about to lose my user/password to a hacker.

Once I figured out the mistake was just making mexico the default connection page I realized Paypal was the one with the problem. Not a hacker per se or so i thought.

[John Hayman] Mine worked ok, even with the link you provided. So ??? John

John Hayman — 6/4/2020 10:19:23 AM

[Green Receipt] to make things more interesting, I tried this URL and got English: paypal.com ...

Green Receipt — 6/3/2020 10:54:15 PM

to make things more interesting, I tried this URL and got English:

paypal.com <== English

paypal.com <== Spanish

Looks like someone screwed up

[Green Receipt] Whats up with paypal today? When I try to login at paypal.com It presents m...

Green Receipt — 6/3/2020 10:02:07 PM

Whats up with paypal today? When I try to login at

paypal.com

It presents me with what I think is spanish.. I also took a look at some of their forum pages and the CSS is all messed up.

[John Hayman] Well, this was one hell of a day on the stock price......go PayPal !!!! John

John Hayman — 5/7/2020 4:51:02 PM

[SI Ron (Crazy Music Man)] [X] #PayPal$PYPL 116.62 +2.3% WePay vs. PayPal Fees: What's the Difference? ht...

SI Ron (Crazy Music Man) — 6/10/2019 1:16:05 PM

[X]

#PayPal $PYPL 116.62 +2.3% WePay vs. PayPal Fees: What's the Difference? https://t.co/euHK98vjfx pic.twitter.com/xk6bKr4fxE
— Silicon Investor (@Si_Investor) June 10, 2019

[/X]

[JakeStraw] PayPal to invest $500 million in Uber cnbc.com A financial services component is...

JakeStraw — 4/26/2019 7:59:02 AM

PayPal to invest $500 million in Uber
cnbc.com
A financial services component is important to Uber as it works to expand into a “superapp” of logistics and transportation services.

Superapps are applications where customers go for a range of services, such as transportation, shopping and payments. Such companies can be much more lucrative than those that offer just one core business or service.

[Sr K] More than 40 million individuals used Venmo in the past 12 months, making the di...

Sr K — 4/25/2019 2:45:31 AM

More than 40 million individuals used Venmo in the past 12 months, making the digital-money transfer service among the most popular financial apps in the country, owner PayPal Holdings reported in its quarterly results.

[JakeStraw] Venmo’s path to profitability for PayPal: Cashing in on $62 billion payments pro...

JakeStraw — 4/24/2019 11:23:10 AM

Venmo’s path to profitability for PayPal: Cashing in on $62 billion payments processed per year
cnbc.com

[JakeStraw] Paypal was downgraded by analysts at Guggenheim from a "buy" rating to a "neutra...

JakeStraw — 2/6/2019 11:44:55 AM

Paypal was downgraded by analysts at Guggenheim from a "buy" rating to a "neutral" rating.

[JakeStraw] Paypal had its price target raised by analysts at Royal Bank of Canada from $103...

JakeStraw — 1/31/2019 11:56:04 AM

Paypal had its price target raised by analysts at Royal Bank of Canada from $103.00 to $105.00. They now have an "outperform" rating on the stock.

Paypal had its price target raised by analysts at Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. from $95.00 to $100.00. They now have an "outperform" rating on the stock.

[JakeStraw] John, For comparison: 2nd Qtr. 2018 - 7.7M accounts added 1st Qtr. 2018 - 8.1M...

JakeStraw — 10/19/2018 2:59:23 PM

John, For comparison:

2nd Qtr. 2018 - 7.7M accounts added

1st Qtr. 2018 - 8.1M accounts added

4th Qtr. 2017 - 8.7M accounts added

3rd Qtr. 2017 - 8.2M accounts added

2nd Qtr. 2017 - 6.5M accounts added

1st Qtr. 2017 - 6.0M accounts added

investor.paypal-corp.com

[John Hayman] "The company added what it called a "record" 9.1 million accounts in the third q...

John Hayman — 10/19/2018 2:37:41 PM

"The company added what it called a "record" 9.1 million accounts in the third quarter, up 15 percent from last quarter, closing the quarter with a total 254 million active accounts."

Anyone have an opinion on the new adds.............is this a normal increase, high-low???

John

[JakeStraw] PayPal reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that topped Wall Street estim...

JakeStraw — 10/19/2018 7:56:23 AM

PayPal reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that topped Wall Street estimates on Thursday.
cnbc.com

[JakeStraw] PayPal will let customers deposit and withdraw cash at Walmart stores cnbc.com

JakeStraw — 10/11/2018 8:18:42 AM

[John Hayman] You folks are in trouble now......because I just bought some shares !!!! The st...

John Hayman — 9/14/2018 1:34:57 PM

You folks are in trouble now......because I just bought some shares !!!! The stock price is bound to go down now.

Anyway, looking forward to the cashless future.
Go Pay
John

[JakeStraw] Jefferies reiterates its buy rating for PayPal shares, predicting it will grow f...

JakeStraw — 8/29/2018 11:53:12 AM

Jefferies reiterates its buy rating for PayPal shares, predicting it will grow faster than the e-commerce industry.
The firm's analyst cites the company's large active user base of 244 million and strong payment volume growth rates.
cnbc.com

[JakeStraw] PayPal revamps its app to remove clutter, add more personalization techcrunch.co...

JakeStraw — 8/24/2018 12:12:29 PM

PayPal revamps its app to remove clutter, add more personalization
techcrunch.com

[JakeStraw] PayPal reported second-quarter earnings that topped Wall Street estimates on Wed...

JakeStraw — 7/25/2018 4:34:00 PM

PayPal reported second-quarter earnings that topped Wall Street estimates on Wednesday.
Here's how the company did compared with what Wall Street expected:
Earnings per share: 58 cents vs. 57 cents, forecast by Thomson Reuters
Revenue: $3.86 billion vs. $3.81 billion, forecast by Thomson Reuters
cnbc.com

[JakeStraw] Daniel Loeb's Third Point unveils new position in PayPal, says it could be next ...

JakeStraw — 7/23/2018 12:13:36 PM

Daniel Loeb's Third Point unveils new position in PayPal, says it could be next Netflix, Amazon
cnbc.com
"Consumers love PayPal because it enables hassle-free, one-touch checkout across millions of online merchants," Loeb said in the note to clients Monday. "We see parallels between PayPal and other best-in-class internet platforms like Netflix and Amazon: high and rising market share, untapped pricing power, and significant margin expansion potential."

[JakeStraw] Uber riders will be able to pay for a trip with the money sitting in their Venmo...

JakeStraw — 7/12/2018 2:28:17 PM

Uber riders will be able to pay for a trip with the money sitting in their Venmo accounts.
PayPal previously introduced the Pay with Venmo option with food delivery services GrubHub and Seamless.
The feature could give Venmo a boost as it fights off digital payment threats from Square's Cash App and bank-backed Zelle.
cnbc.com

[JakeStraw] PayPal sells its consumer credit portfolio to Synchrony for $7 billion techcrunc...

JakeStraw — 7/3/2018 12:16:22 PM

PayPal sells its consumer credit portfolio to Synchrony for $7 billion
techcrunch.com

[JakeStraw] PayPal Checkout can now be personalized to each shopper techcrunch.com

JakeStraw — 6/28/2018 12:06:04 PM

[JakeStraw] PayPal to Acquire Simility to Expand Global Fraud Prevention and Risk Management...

JakeStraw — 6/22/2018 7:54:36 AM

PayPal to Acquire Simility to Expand Global Fraud Prevention and Risk Management Capabilities for Merchants
markets.siliconinvestor.com
“Digital commerce has exploded, and fraudsters have taken note, adapting and developing new methods to carry out their crimes,” said Bill Ready, chief operating officer, PayPal. “PayPal has been at the forefront of developing innovative fraud prevention and risk management solutions for nearly 20 years, and now, merchants will be able to configure those solutions to manage the unique complexities of their businesses. Together with Simility, we will be able to put more control in the hands of our merchants to fight fraud while helping make commerce experiences faster and more secure.”

[JakeStraw] PayPal Stock Rises As Acquisitions Improve Scale Vs. Square, Adyen investors.com

JakeStraw — 6/20/2018 1:30:48 PM

[JakeStraw] PayPal Significantly Enhances Global Payout Capabilities With Acquisition of Hyp...

JakeStraw — 6/20/2018 8:00:56 AM

PayPal Significantly Enhances Global Payout Capabilities With Acquisition of Hyperwallet
businesswire.com
Hyperwallet’s global payout platform provides growing organizations with a fast, efficient, and transparent way to distribute funds to payees almost anywhere in the world. Trusted by enterprise, ecommerce, and on-demand platforms, Hyperwallet makes it easy to deliver a superior payment experience through a single integration. Put your payees in control with a range of convenient payment methods, enhanced financial management tools, integrated payment tracking, and user-friendly compliance and identity verification. Hyperwallet has offices in San Francisco, Austin, London, Sydney, and Vancouver.