PAYPAL

PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. PayPal serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as cheques and money orders.
PayPal is a type of person-to-person payment service (P2P). A P2P payment service allows anyone with an e-mail address to transfer funds electronically to someone else with an e-mail address. The initiator of an electronic funds transfer via PayPal must first register with and fund their PayPal account. A PayPal account can be funded with a check or money order, an electronic debit from a bank account or by a credit card. The recipient of a PayPal transfer can either request a check from PayPal, establish their own PayPal deposit account or request a transfer to their bank account. PayPal is an example of a payment intermediary service that facilitates worldwide e-commerce.


PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other commercial users, for which it charges a fee. It sometimes also charges a transaction fee for receiving money (a percentage of the amount sent plus an additional fixed amount). The fees charged depend on the currency used, the payment option used, the country of the sender, the country of the recipient, the amount sent and the recipient's account type. [1] On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay.[2] Its corporate headquarters are in San Jose, California, United States at eBay's North First Street satellite office campus. The company also has significant operations in Omaha, Nebraska, Scottsdale, Arizona; and Austin, Texas in the U.S.; India; Dublin, Ireland; and Berlin, Germany, and now also in Tel-Aviv, Israel after PayPal acquired an Israeli startup called FraudSciences [1] for $169 million.[3] As of July 2007, across Europe, PayPal also operates as a Luxembourg-based bank.

Business today
Currently, PayPal operates in 190 markets, and it manages over 164 million accounts. PayPal allows customers to send, receive, and hold funds in 18 currencies worldwide. These currencies are the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Chinese renminbi yuan (only available for some Chinese accounts, see below), Euro, Pound sterling, Japanese yen, Czech Koruna, Danish krone, Hong Kong dollar, Hungarian forint, Israeli new sheqel, Mexican pesos, New Zealand dollar, Norwegian krone, Polish zloty, Singapore dollar, Swedish krona, Swiss franc and U.S. dollar. PayPal operates locally in 13 countries.
Residents in 190 markets can use PayPal in their local markets to send money online. These new markets include Peru, Indonesia, the Philippines, Croatia, Fiji, Vietnam and Jordan. A complete list can be viewed at PayPal's website.
In China PayPal offers two kinds of accounts:
• PayPal.com accounts, for sending and receiving money to/from other PayPal.com accounts. All non-Chinese accounts are PayPal.com accounts, so these accounts may be used to send money internationally.
• PayPal.cn accounts, for sending and receiving money to and from other PayPal.cn accounts.
It is impossible to send money between PayPal.cn accounts and PayPal.com accounts, so PayPal.cn accounts are effectively unable to make international payments. For PayPal.cn, the only supported currency is the renminbi.
Although PayPal's corporate headquarters are located in San Jose, PayPal’s operations center is located near Omaha, Nebraska, where the company employs more than 2,000 people as of 2007.[13] PayPal’s international headquarters is located in Dublin, Ireland. The company also recently opened a technology center in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Bank status
In the United States, PayPal is licensed as a money transmitter on a state-by-state basis.[15] PayPal is not classified as a bank in the United States, though the company is subject to some of the rules and regulations governing the financial industry including Regulation E consumer protections and the USA PATRIOT Act.[16] On May 15, 2007, PayPal announced that it would move its European operations from the UK to Luxembourg, commencing July 2, 2007 as PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. & Cie, S.C.A.[17] This would be as a Luxembourg entity regulated as a bank by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), the Luxembourg equivalent of the FSA.[18] PayPal Luxembourg will then provide the PayPal service throughout the European Union (EU).