How e-commerce works

• What is e-commerce
• Success in e-commerce
• PayPal explained

PayPal explained PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing PayPal had previously been the payment method payments and money transfers to be made of choice by more than fifty percent of eBay through the Internet. It serves as an users, and the service competed with electronic alternative to traditional paper eBay’s subsidiary Billpoint. eBay has methods such as cheques and money orders. since phased out its Billpoint service in PayPal performs payment processing for online favor of retaining the PayPal brand. Most of vendors, auction sites, and other corporate PayPal’s major competitors have shut users, for which it charges a fee. On 3 down or have been sold; Citibank’s October 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned c2it service closed in late 2003, and subsidiary of eBay. Their corporate Yahoo!'s PayDirect service closed in late headquarters are in San Jose, California, at 2004. Western Union announced the December eBay's North First Street satellite office 2005 shut down of their BidPay service, but campus. The company also has significant subsequently sold it in 2006 to CyberSource operations in Omaha, Nebraska; Dublin, Corporation. Some competitors which offer Ireland;  and  Berlin,  Germany. some of PayPal’s services, such as Wirecard, Moneybookers, 2Checkout, CCNow and History Kagi,  remain  in  business. Beginnings PayPal’s total payment volume, the total value of transactions in Q4 2006, was PayPal, Inc., as it is known today, is the $11 billion, up 36% year over year. The result of a March 2000 merger between company continues to focus on international Confinity and X.com.Confinity was founded in growth and growth of its Merchant Services December of 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, division, providing online payments for and Luke Nosek, initially as a Palm Pilot retailers  off  eBay. payments and cryptography company. Confinity launched its milestone product, PayPal in As of the end of Q4 2006, PayPal operates in late 1999. X.com was founded by Elon Musk in 103 markets (including China) and it manages March of 1999, initially as an Internet over 133 million accounts. PayPal allows financial services company. Both companies customers to send, receive and hold funds in were located on University Avenue in Palo 17 currencies worldwide. These currencies are Alto. At Confinity, many of the initial the U.S. Dollar, Canadian Dollar, Australian recruits were alumni of The Stanford Review, Dollar, Euro, Pounds Sterling, Japanese Yen, also founded by Peter Thiel, and most early Chinese RMB, Czech Koruna, Danish Krone, Hong engineers hailed from the University of Kong Dollar, Hungarian Forint, New Zealand Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited by Dollar, Norwegian Krone, Polish Zloty, Max Levchin. On the X.com side, Elon Musk Singapore Dollar, Swedish Krona, and Swiss recruited a wide range of personnel, many of Franc. PayPal operates locally in 13 whom remain at PayPal today, such as Amy countries. Klement and several other members of the senior  team.[citation  needed] Residents in 48 new markets can now use PayPal in their local markets to send money To block potentially fraudulent accesss by online. These new markets include Indonesia, automated systems, PayPal devised a system the Philippines, Croatia, Fiji, Vietnam and (see CAPTCHA) of making the user enter Jordan. A complete list can be viewed at numbers from a blurry picture, which they https://www.paypal.com/worldwide. coined the Gausebeck-Levchin test; according to Eric M. Jackson, author of the book The In China PayPal offers two kinds of accounts: PayPal Wars, PayPal invented this system now in common use; though, there is evidence PayPal.com accounts, for sending and AltaVista used a captcha as early as 1997, receiving money to/from other PayPal.com before  PayPal  existed. accounts. All non-Chinese accounts are PayPal.com accounts, so these accounts may be eBay watched the rise in volume of online used  to  send  money  internationally. payments, and realized its fit with online auctions. eBay purchased Billpoint in May PayPal.cn accounts, for sending and receiving 1999, prior to the existence of Paypal. eBay money  to/from  other  PayPal.cn  accounts. made Billpoint the official payment system of eBay, dubbing it "eBay Payments", but cut the It is impossible to send money between functionality of Billpoint by narrowing it to PayPal.cn accounts and PayPal.com accounts, only  payments  made  for  eBay  auctions. so PayPal.cn accounts are effectively unable to make international payments. For For this reason PayPal was listed in several PayPal.cn, the only supported currency is the times as many auctions as Billpoint. In Renminbi (RMB, ISO: CNY), whereas PayPal.com February of 2000 there were approximately an supports Canadian Dollar, Euro, Pound average of 200,000 daily auctions advertising Sterling, U.S. Dollar, Australian Dollar, New the PayPal service while Billpoint (in beta) Zealand Dollar, Swiss Franc, Hong Kong had only 4,000 auctions. By April of 2000 Dollar, Singapore Dollar, Swedish Krona, there were more than 1,000,000 auctions Danish Krone, Polish Zloty, Norwegian Krone, promoting the PayPal service. PayPal was able Hungarian  Forint,  Czech  Koruna. to turn the corner and become the first dot-com to IPO after the September 11 PayPal’s operation center is located attacks. near Omaha, Nebraska and PayPal’s international headquarters is located in Acquisition  by  eBay Dublin, Ireland. The company also recently opened a technology center in Scottsdale, In October 2002 PayPal was acquired by eBay. Arizona.