The idea for PayPal was basically a service to make money transfers through email. It was established in 1999 as Confinity - a mobile payment security company by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek.
It targeted small businesses, offering online banking services and faster transactions. They hired their friends first. PayPal was their flagship product.
At the earliest functioning version, PayPal let you send money to someone if you knew their email. You could do it even if they didn't have a PayPal account. Later, PayPal transformed into a full-blown digital wallet.
When PayPal appeared on eBay, the team made bots. Their target were eBay Power Sellers - the top 20,000 merchants on the platform. The bots were buying stuff there and insisted on paying via PayPal. eBay sellers got interested in the service because it looked like there was an increasing demand for it.
This marketing stunt turned into 33% market share after just 3 months!
After the merger, between Confinity and Elon Musk's X.com, Musk's company changed the name to PayPal. Confinity got phased out.
