 | |
| Industry | Financial services |
|---|---|
| Founded | October 1998 |
| Founders |
|
| Defunct | 2003 |
| Successor | eBay |
| Headquarters | |
| Website | www.billpoint.com |
Billpoint was the name of a person-to-person money transfer service founded in 1998, and purchased in 1999 by online auctioneer eBay. [1]
Billpoint was founded in 1998 by S. Young Lee, Hope Chen, Will Chen, Jason May, Ian Flint and Jay Shen, with headquarters in Redwood City, California. The company obtained venture funding from Sequoia Capital in February 1999, [2] and later that year was purchased by eBay; its website was taken offline while integration into eBay's auction service took place. It reappeared in 2000 when it was relaunched as a joint venture with Wells Fargo bank. [3]
During this interval, online payment service PayPal was launched, rapidly becoming popular with eBay's customers. Billpoint and eBay spent much of the next two years trying to overtake PayPal, but with mixed results. [3] [4]
In July 2002, eBay CEO Meg Whitman agreed to the acquisition of PayPal with its CEO Peter Thiel. When the deal was closed in October 2002, eBay began the process of phasing out Billpoint. [4] The shutdown was completed in early 2003. [5]
eBay Inc. is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that brokers customer to customer and retail sales through online marketplaces in 190 markets worldwide. Sales occur either via online auctions or "buy it now" instant sales, and the company charges commissions to sellers upon sales. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in September 1995. It has 134 million yearly active buyers worldwide and handled $74 billion in transactions in 2022, 49% of which was in the United States. In 2022, the company had a take rate of 13.25%.
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and many other commercial users, for which it charges a fee.
A micropayment is a financial transaction involving a very small sum of money and usually one that occurs online. A number of micropayment systems were proposed and developed in the mid-to-late 1990s, all of which were ultimately unsuccessful. A second generation of micropayment systems emerged in the 2010s.
Pierre Morad Omidyar is a French-born Iranian-American billionaire. A technology entrepreneur, software engineer, and philanthropist, he is the founder of eBay, where he served as chairman from 1998 to 2015. Omidyar and his wife Pamela founded Omidyar Network in 2004. As of 2023, Forbes ranked Omidyar as the 245th-richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $8.7 billion.
An online auction is an auction held over the internet and accessed by internet connected devices. Similar to in-person auctions, online auctions come in a variety of types, with different bidding and selling rules.
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Eric M. Jackson is the co-founder of CapLinked, a project management and business transaction company. He is founder and former CEO of World Ahead Publishing, and is a former vice president of marketing at PayPal. He is one of the PayPal Mafia, a growing number of PayPal alumni who have started new ventures after eBay bought the online payments firm.
X.com was an American online bank founded by Elon Musk, Harris Fricker, Christopher Payne, and Ed Ho in 1999 in Palo Alto, California. In 2000, it merged with competitor Confinity and in 2001, the merged company changed its name to PayPal.
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Google Checkout was an online payment processing service provided by Google aimed at simplifying the process of paying for online purchases. The web checkout service was combined with the NFC mobile payments app launched in September of 2011 called Google Wallet under a platform brand of the same name. On November 20, 2013 and the web checkout part of the service was fully retired.
Yahoo! PayDirect was the name of a person-to-person money transfer service by Yahoo! via HSBC, competing with Billpoint and PayPal.
Shopping.com is a price comparison service owned by eBay and operates websites in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Australia. Shopping.com started out with the name DealTime.com which now redirects users to Shopping.com.
Zong was a mobile payment company that allowed users to make micropayments on the Internet if they have a postpaid mobile phone. The payments were charged to their mobile phone bills by the mobile operator. The company was acquired by eBay in 2011 and disappeared in 2015.
The "PayPal Mafia" is a group of former PayPal employees and founders who have since founded and/or developed additional technology companies based in Silicon Valley such as Tesla, Inc., LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, Affirm, Slide, Kiva, YouTube, Yelp, and Yammer. Most of the members attended Stanford University or University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign at some point in their studies.
WePay is an online payment service provider based in the United States. It provides an integrated and customizable payment solution, through its APIs, to platform businesses such as crowdfunding sites, marketplaces and small business software companies. It also offers partners fraud and risk protection.
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This is a timeline of online money transfer and e-commerce service PayPal, owned by eBay from 2002 to 2015 and an independent company before and after that.
C2it was a person-to-person money transfer service established by Citibank in 2000 as a competitor to PayPal and Billpoint. It was formed as a partnership with AOL, and later with Compuserve and Microsoft.
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