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Online payments
PayPal v Google's Checkout
May 3rd 2007
From The Economist print edition
IN HIS celebrated book, “The PayPal Wars”, Eric Jackson described how in its early years the internet firm had to battle crotchety regulators, identity thieves, volatile markets, scrappy rivals and even scheming Mafiosi. It has since gone on to become the undisputed master of online-payments processing. Now, however, to stay on top, it must leap from being merely big to ubiquitous. And it will have to do so while fending off new competitors—especially Google.
PayPal was founded in 1998 as a way of moving money between Palm Pilots. It soon became a popular way to pay for goods on eBay. So successful was it that in 2002 the auction site ditched its own payments service, Billpoint, and paid $1.5 billion to bring PayPal under its wing. It now boasts 143m accounts, double the number it had two years ago. Already international—35m of the accounts are in Europe, 15m of those in Britain alone—it is striving to become truly global. Next week it is expected to announce that the number of countries in which PayPal transfers can be made has risen to 190 from 103.…
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