Paypal is a combination of two companies that merged in 2000, so it has more than one founder. One of the original companies was a payments firm called Confinity, which had four founders: Ken Howery, Luke Nosek, Max Levchin and Peter Thiel. The other was X.com, founded by Elon Musk, which specialised in internet financial services.

Paypal quickly began to be used by large numbers of eBay users to pay for their transactions. By 2002 it had become so popular that the eBay company (founded by Pierre Omidyar) bought it. Its operations soon went far beyond eBay, though. Over the next few years, most of the firms offering similar payment services closed down or were bought out, and Paypal is now the market leader although there are still a few rivals, such as Moneybookers.

Paypal today is used all over the world, by both business and private customers.