Anyone who buys online must be familiar with the popular payment method, PayPal. This big company was first founded in 2015 with headquarters located in California. PayPal was considered to be the first payment gateway available and that enabled people to purchase items online. Their main focus was to provide a quick, safe, and secure service. At first, people were skeptical about the whole idea since it was a completely new concept. Nowadays, PayPal continues to grow and is known as one of the most recognizable brands worldwide. Below are some PayPal facts and statistics that you might not be aware of.
History of PayPal
This business was originally launched in 1998 under the name Confinity as a security software development company. Later in 1999, it changed completely to provide a money transfer service. In the following year, Confinity merged with X.com which was an online banking company founded by Elon Musk himself. In 2001, the company was renamed to what we know it today, PayPal and in 2002 it was bought by eBay. In 2007, PayPal signed a partnership with MasterCard which allowed a single-use MasterCard number. This enhanced their trustworthiness and more businesses joined in the venture, especially casino sites. At that time, online casino with PayPal also became popular. Many years later, in 2014, eBay decided to transform PayPal into a separate publicly-traded company.
Although the history of PayPal is quite confusing with multiple changes in ownership, the final owner of this company is Daniel Schulman. He took complete ownership when the company split from eBay in 2014.
Some interesting quick facts about PayPal include:
- The business idea was voted as one of the worst in 1999
- In one year, PayPal processed more than 12.5 billion
- PayPal can be used with 26 different currencies and in over 100 countries
The engineering for PayPal was created by Elon Musk himself who is famously known for his impressive companies, Tesla and SpaceX. He initially founded the company X.com which was also a payment method that gave people the opportunity to transfer money to another person by using this platform. The merger of this company and another one is where PayPal was born. Although Elon Musk sold PayPal for nearly 180 million dollars, he had to borrow money to pay his rent since he spent all the money to start his other companies.
Statistics show how people are 54% more likely to make an online purchase when PayPal is offered as one of the options. This is because it is highly trusted in the e-commerce world. 59% of online purchases reject a sale if they are not able to use PayPal. Although its success throughout the years, it was voted as one of the worst business ideas of the year 1999.
Founder of YouTube Chad Hurley helped design the PayPal logo when he was one of the senior employees there. He was actually the lead designer of the old and new logo. The connection between two of the most prominent applications is still evident to this very day. Although its success is huge, PayPal lost millions and millions of dollars in the first year of operation all because of their referral program. Currently, the referral program gives the new user $5 when signing up and using the code, and then another $5 for each additional friend that uses that same code. In the first few years of operation, the referral program gave $20 every time the referral code was used. This cost them around 14 million dollars although they saw immense growth.
Many are not aware of this but apart from being a payment method, PayPal also has a small business loans division that gives out small loans to help growing businesses. They are highly considered in the start-up community especially since they offer a lower rate of interest than normal banks.
Some interesting usage statistics about PayPal include:
- The number of daily transactions is around 34 million
- 58% of the US population make use of PayPal, therefore, 14% of the payment transactions take place within the US
- PayPal has a Luxembourg banking license, which allows them to conduct banking activities within the European Union
- You must note that it is not possible to delete your PayPal history without deleting the complete account
- PayPal paid out more than 700,000 in loans to 225,000 + different start-up businesses
PayPal One Touch Feature
This service was introduced to help PayPal’s customers do their transactions faster. It is completely safe and secure especially since you will be automatically logged out of the device once you leave the account. The one-touch feature helps when doing multiple transactions and payments with different devices. You can access this from your wallet fast and securely. More than 80 million users make use of PayPal One Touch. PayPal will constantly continue to look for different ways to improve its overall user experience.
PayPal Users in 2021
Statistically, every year PayPal sees a growth of 16%. In 2019, the company saw 295 million users and at the end of 2020, it surpassed the 360 million mark. When considering the impact of the pandemic on the customer’s shopping habits, we surely expect to see more growth by the end of 2021. This growth means that people are still finding reasons to use this service. Since a lot of people are using this service as a way to earn their living, it remains one of the top ways to organize financial transactions in a safe and secure manner.
Conclusion
PayPal is one of the strongest payment systems available as it handles a wide variety of things including money transfers and orders done with most global currencies. Although there are many competitors within the field now, PayPal is still strong and gaining popularity as time goes by. PayPal statistics support these facts. PayPal will surely not stop any time soon as many professionals cannot do without it. One of the top customers includes those freelance and remote workers.