PayPal has come a long way in a short time , as 286 million active users and around 10 billion payments annually can attest . PayPal ( PYPL ) is the e-commerce giant with a loyal user base which is seeing younger consumers embracing the digital payment platform . The company is highly profitable and global in scope , dealing with 100 currencies in more than 200 world markets .

Dec 1998

Oct 1999 - early 2000

Mar 2000 - Feb 2002

Original name

PayPal wasn ' t even named PayPal when it was founded in 1998 by technology entrepreneurs Peter Thiel and Max Levchin . Instead , the company ' s initial name was Confinity , a company founded on the premise of low-cost , almost effortless digital payments for consumers and businesses .

Email-based payment technology

Within two years , the founders renamed their company PayPal , after a decision was made to focus only on payments made over the burgeoning internet . Thiel and Levchin adeptly leveraged an opening in the payments market , as nobody was really focusing on a digital payment platform between consumers and businesses . PayPal took off at the start of the new century .

Going public

In March 2000 Paypal ( which changed from Confinity to this name later that year in June ) cleared the one million customer mark . The next month , February 2002 , the company goes public with the issuance of new stock . The IPO is hit as PayPal stock rises by more than 50 % and first day trading closes at $ 20 per share .

20 July 2021