[28] In January 2008, PayPal acquired Fraud Sciences, a privately held Israeli start-up that developed online risk tools, for $169 million.

[38] In 2013, PayPal acquired IronPearl, a Palo Alto startup offering engagement software,[39] and Braintree, a Chicago-based payment gateway, to further product development and mobile services.

[42] PayPal announced that Marcus would be succeeded by Dan Schulman, who previously served as CEO of Virgin Mobile and Executive vice president of American Express.

[43] It was announced on September 30, 2014, that eBay would spin off PayPal into a separate publicly traded company, a move demanded in 2013 by activist hedge fund magnate Carl Icahn.

The move strengthened PayPal’s international business, giving it access to Xoom’s 1.3 million active U.S. customers that sent about $7 billion in the 12 months ending on March 31, to people in 37 countries.

This was PayPal's largest acquisition until late November 2019 and the company claims that it is the in-store expertise and digital marketing strength that will complement its own online and mobile payment services.

[71] In 2024, PayPal executives announced that the company aim to revive growth in their branded checkout products amidst increased competition from big tech, following an upward revision of the full-year profit forecast.

[117] PayPal's services allow people to make financial transactions online by granting the ability to transfer funds electronically between individuals and businesses.

One year after acquiring Braintree, PayPal introduced its "One Touch" service, which allows users to pay with a one-touch option on participating merchants websites or apps.

In November 2009, PayPal partially opened its platform, allowing other services to get access to more APIs and to use its infrastructure in order to enable peer-to-peer online transactions.

Paypal has been using Paxos Trust to provide the back end infrastructure allowing users to manage and trade cryptocurrencies in accordance to data privacy rules and financial regulations.

For example, PayPal merchants are either required to retain a traceable proof of shipping to a confirmed address or to provide a signed receipt for items valued over $750.

A late 2003 reorganization created a new business unit within PayPal—Merchant Services—to provide payment solutions to small and large e-commerce merchants outside the eBay auction community.

The regulators had demanded that PayPal's data centers be located inside Turkey to facilitate compliance with government and court orders to block content and to generate tax revenue.

A commercial with Will Ferrell singing a slightly revised version of Fleetwood Mac's "Everywhere" debuted before the first ESPN broadcast of Monday Night Football of the 2024 season.

Ordinarily, a credit card transaction, specifically the relationship between the issuing bank and the cardholder, is governed by the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) 15 U.S.C.

[193] There are also other restrictions in terms of the sale itself, the payment method and the destination country the item is shipped to (simply having a tracking mechanism is not sufficient to guarantee the Seller Protection Policy is in effect).

This two-factor authentication is intended to make it difficult for an account to be compromised by a malicious third party without access to the physical security key, although it does not prevent the so-called Man in the Browser (MITB) attacks.

[199] This development of fraud monitoring software at PayPal led Peter Thiel to create Palantir, a big-data security company whose original mission was to "reduce terrorism while preserving civil liberties.

"[200] In 2015, 150,000 Spanish cardholders had their funds frozen in an apparent fraud case involving a PayPal service provider, Younique Money, which was the de facto administrator of the cards.

Honey has also been exposed for intentionally hiding better deals that users would recommend online and instead pulling out worse discounts from the cashback program, which the company has full control over.

[216] In May 2013, PayPal declined to pay a reward offered in its Bug Bounty Program[217] to a 17-year-old German student who had reported a cross-site scripting flaw on its site.

[218] The company wrote that the vulnerability had been previously reported, and chastised the youth for disclosing the issue to the public, but, uniquely, sent him a "Letter of recognition" for the discovery.

[219] In August 2013, entrepreneurs who had used PayPal to collect the funds they raised on crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo reported difficulty in being able to withdraw the money.

[224][225] As of January 2015, a class-action lawsuit against PayPal was filed in Israel,[226] claiming that they arbitrarily froze accounts and held funds for up to 180 days without paying interest and thereby directly profited from it.

[235] In February 2017, PayPal froze the account of News Media Canada, a Canadian trade association, in response to a payment from The Reminder, a Flin Flon, Manitoba community newspaper, intended to cover the fee for the Reminder's submission of articles for consideration in a nationwide journalism contest run by News Media Canada, including one discussing Syrian refugees.

[236] In September 2018, PayPal banned radio host Alex Jones and his website InfoWars, claiming that his site has content that was hateful and discriminatory against certain religious groups.

[242] In July 2021, PayPal announced a plan to collaborate with the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and several other nonprofits to analyze its users' transactions, in order to investigate the finances of extremist and hate groups in the United States and share the results with law enforcement, policymakers, and other financial corporations;[243][244] the ADL's CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, stated that this initiative is meant to help "mitigat[e] extremist threats.

"[244] In September 2022, PayPal shut the accounts of the British social commentator Toby Young, and two connected organisations: the Free Speech Union and The Daily Sceptic website.

"[248][249] In March 2002, two PayPal account holders separately sued the company for alleged violations of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) and California law.