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| EMPLOYEES CELEBRATE! In 2012 PayPal was Ranked 17 in a survey by research firm Great Places To Work |
FAST FACTS
Company profile: E-commerce business enabling safe payments and money transfers, acquired by eBay in 2002
Active registered accounts: 106 million in approx 190 markets in 25 currencies
Turnover: Net total payment volume for transactions using mobile devices reached $4 billion in 2011; up from $750 million in 2010
Headquarters: San Jose, California; Development centres: San Jose, Austin, Scottsdale, Boston, Timonium, Omaha, Chennai, Bangalore, Shanghai, Singapore, Dublin
India employee strength: 2300 technologists
Hiring forecast: 1000 technologists in next three years for Bangalore; Adding staff to Chennai centre
TODAY, many don’t think twice before purchasing a product or service online, be it a gizmo, airline ticket or apparel. However, in the late 1990s online shopping was viewed with suspicion; safety of online transactions and fraud were major concerns. Then in October 1999, an engineer in a company called Confinity developed an online demo that allowed people to make payments through email. And the product PayPal was born (later Confinity merged with X.com, which eventually was rechristened as Paypal, the company).
| PayPal’s leading online services |
- Global payment service
- Payflow Gateway
- Bill Me Later
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| Product development job profiles |
- Development engineers
- Quality engineers
- Product managers
- User experience professionals
- Web developers
- Project managers
- Site operations staff
- Data management staff
- Risk analytics staff
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Gaining trust
In November 1999, first-time PayPal users received $10 on signing up for the service. By Jan 2000 eBay users were posting PayPal’s logos on their auction pages. So, PayPal changed its business to enable eBay payments. The number of users grew to 100,000 accounts. By March 2000 PayPal hit one million users. Obviously by then, consumers had developed a whole new attitude towards online shopping – that of trust.
Growth curve
PayPal was acquired by eBay in 2002; it was meant to serve as the payment engine for all eBay transactions. Instead, due to the simplicity and convenience of usage, PayPal grew beyond this expectation. It became a successful financial instrument for a large magnitude of consumers, who used it everyday. In 2012, 40% of eBay’s revenues were from PayPal. And today, with 106 million active registered accounts in approximately 190 markets and in 25 currencies, it’s evident that e-commerce has come a long way since the 1990s.
