eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) has been taking away many things from their users.  Sellers are no longer able to leave feedback for buyers.  eBay has opened the flood gates for fixed price listings for sellers like Buy.com.  And now eBay is giving less options to pay for and accept payment for goods.  Starting next month, buyers and sellers in the U.S. can only use PayPal for transactions.

Checks and money orders will no longer be acceptable.  This will be the case for almost all of the items.  Items with exceptions includes cars, real estate, industrial equipment and other mature audience goods [Ars Technica]. 

“We’re making this change to better meet buyer expectations for a consistent, more secure checkout experience on eBay,” stated part of the FAQ regarding the update. “This should increase buyer confidence in shopping on eBay, which should result in more buyers and increased sales for sellers. The change will directly benefit sellers by making payments faster and more reliable, enabling sellers to ship more quickly and increase buyer satisfaction.”

eBay does not allow Google Checkout or Checkout by Amazon.com as payment because they directly compete with the auction company itself.  Payments through ProPay will also be accepted.  eBay is also preventing checks and money orders to protect sellers from fraud.  I’m sure that many power sellers have been the victim of bounced checks sent for eBay goods.  I think this is a good move because PayPal serves as a pretty good escrow service.  PayPal was $1.5 billion well spent by eBay.

Scott Thompson, President of eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) subsidiary PayPal has joined the Board of Directors for Zuora. Thompson helped build some of the technologies that PayPal uses today.

Zuora is essentially a subscription billing company. Zuora’s flagship product is called Z-Billing. Z-Billing makes it easy to manage customer accounts, product catalog, billing operations, and subscriptions.

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“Over the past decade, PayPal has allowed people to do something that few ever dreamed possible 10 years ago – send and receive money all around the world through the click of a button,” stated Scott Thompson, President of PayPal. “We’re proud of the role we’ve played in the growth of e-commerce, and we’re energized about what the next 10 years will bring.”

PayPal was founded on June 23, 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek.  PayPal was one of the first payment systems for e-commerce and online bidding systems.  This is why eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) bought them for $1.5 billion in October 2002.  About 80% of the U.S. online shopping market stated that PayPal has made their lives easier too.

Currently there are over 60 million PayPal users exchanging 17 different currencies across 190 countries.  During every second of the day, PayPal transmits $2,000.  PayPal’s official 10th anniversary website is available at: https://www.paypal-10.com/.

PayPal received its first round of funding at $4.5 million by Nokia Ventures and Deutsche Bank in July 1999.  PayPal, Inc. was also one of the first companies to go public after 9/11 under the NASDAQ with stock ticket symbol, PYPL.

Without PayPal we wouldn’t have LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Slide, Yelp, Geni.com, Tesla Motors, HourTown, Room 9 Entertainment, SpaceX, or Anchor Intelligence.  These are some of the entrepreneurship involved with former employees of PayPal.  eBay also would not have become as big as it is today without PayPal’s help.

Many Internet businesses depend on PayPal to collect money for their products and it will most likely not change anytime soon.  Cheers, PayPal.  I cannot wait to see what’s in store over the next 10 years.

As you give a goofy look at the camera pointing at you in a photo kiosk at an entertainment venue, you begin to wonder what captions and background you’ll use.  Now take this concept, slap it on the Internet in the form of a widget that can be Facebooked or MySpaced, and you’re ready to raise $50 million.

Business-savvy Internet entrepreneur and PayPal co-founder, Max Levchin did exactly that, as mentioned in BusinessWeek.  Slide raised $50 million and increased their valuation to $500 million.  This fourth round of investment was provided by Fidelity Investments and T. Rowe Price.

Photo widget companies is a proven model for acquisition targets, but is also a proven model for its vulnerability of mooching on other social networks’ user base.  For example, Photobucket was acquired by News Corp. in May 2007 at a price of $250 million in cash.  But before the acquisition, MySpace completely blocked Photobucket from accessing their users because of an advertising violation before making a truce. 

Altogether, Slide has raised over $75 million including investments from other PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel and venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla.  Thiel is an early investor of Facebook.  The other founders of Slide include Jared Kopf and Scott Banister, both also former PayPal employees.

Previous Slide coverage is available at: http://pulse2.com/category/slide/.

 
Greylock Partners announced today that they would be investing $4 million in New York City based company, Payoneer.  Payoneer is a company that allows companies and business partners to pay each other via MasterCard online.  Payoneer is a private company that markets and manages prepaid MasterCard cards and works with the Royal Bank of Scotland and the First Bank of Delaware to process card transactions.

Upon realizing the importance of developing strong partnerships with Web 2.0 companies, Payoneer currently works with selected business allies such as Metacafe, Amie St., oDesk, and BitWine.  Using such a service could also be very beneficial for Web 2.0 start-ups with only a few employees that share office expenses.

“The Internet payout space may well become a killer application in the next few years as Internet companies transition to smarter ways to pay out their partners around the globe,” stated Moshe Mor, a partner at Greylock Partners. “Payoneer’s team has deep payments experience, and an already impressive track rate of customer adoption and solutions. We’re delighted to work in partnership with Payoneer to fuel the company’s expanded market presence.” 

“Web-driven businesses have the unique opportunity to use payments as a retention tool, not just a cost line-item,” stated Yuval Tal, the CEO and founder of Payoneer. “With our additional funding on board, we’ll be adding to our team, expanding our service offerings, and working aggressively to win new accounts during this exciting high-growth time in our market.” 

Payoneer was founded in 2005 and maintains a research and development facility in Tel Aviv, Israel.   The co-branded MasterCards provided by Payoneer can be used anywhere whether it is in any store, online, or ATMs that MasterCards are accepted.

Proven Model Cases:
Citigroup Inc./eCount Inc.
“The prepaid card market is experiencing high growth, and is currently estimated at more than $2 trillion worldwide, as corporations and consumers continue to move from paper checks to electronic-based payment methods” states a Citibank press release announcement of the fairly recent eCount Inc. acquisition.

eBay Inc./PayPal
Another proven model is the legendary $1.5 billion acquisition of PayPal.  In July 2002 eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock.  PayPal now has 114 million customers as of October 2006 over 103 markets and 17 different currencies.

It is expected that with this round of funding that Payoneer will become hypercompetitive amongst some of the major aforementioned players out there.  I have no doubt in my mind that we’ll start seeing the Payoneer logo quite a bit more as we shop online.

[Information Source: E-mail from PR Representative for Greylock Partners]

Two of eBay’s most expensive properties, PayPal ($1.5 billion in stock) and Skype ($2.6 billion in cash and stock) are now going to start interconnecting.  This means that Skype users will be able to send money to each other via PayPal.  This was announced by Niklas Zennström yesterday.

Although the announcement was made, as far as when the service would be available is still unknown.  Zennström made the announcement at a technology conference in California.  Skype has millions of global users.  The release dates are expected to be announced within a month.

“You can send money over Skype,” stated Zennström. “This is basically connecting the Skype community over PayPal. All the user needs is a PayPal account.”

Skype has over 171 million registered users over countries all over the world and PayPal is constantly expanding to global markets.  PayPal has 114 million customers as of October 2006 over 103 markets and 17 different currencies [Source: Pulse 2.0].

[Article Source: Red Herring]

San Jose, CA based eBay Inc., the online auction/shopping website created by Pierre Omidyar are getting close to acquiring StubHub for over $300 million. StubHub is one of the largest online ticket-sellers for concerts and sporting events. Last year, StubHub sold over $400 million worth of tickets. StubHub made $10 million EBIT last year.

Although the deal has not been officially confirmed by eBay representatives, people familiar with the matter reported the acquisition possibility to the Wall Street Journal. The acquisition announcement could happen as early as tomorrow.

eBay competes directly with StubHub for ticket-selling. eBay has been acquiring companies left and right for the past few years. eBay acquired Sweden-based online auction company Tradera for $48 million in April 2006. Also last April, eBay acquired social networking website, Meetup for $2 million. Two of eBay’s most well-known acquisitions was Skype for $2.6 billion and PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002.

Slide.com, the photo slideshow website has raised a third round of funding from Khosla Ventures and Mayfield Fund. According to VentureBeat, the amount of funding for the third round is undisclosed, but there are rumors circulating that it is over the second round of $8 million. Based on third round funding estimations, Slide is currently worth near or over $20 million.

Creating a slideshow with Slide is done in 3 simple steps from the arrange page. The three steps are: 1.) Create a Slide Show, 2.) Save Slide Show, and 3.) Share Slide Show. There are 4 presets to scroll pictures: Sliding, Stars, Collage, and Checker. Photos can be directly imported from your PC hard drive, Photobucket account, Flickr account, MySpace account, or direct URLs. There are also several themes and sizes to alter these slide shows.

One of the co-founders of Slide is Max Levchin, a co-founder and former CTO of PayPal. Levchin is from Kiev, Ukraine, then moved to Chicago to attend UIUC. After PayPal went public in 2002 and his 2.3% stake was converted into $34 million after the eBay acquired PayPal, Levchin started Slide in 2004.

Levchin had also created Yelp, a review-centric social network. Previous investors include Founders Fund, BlueRun Ventures, and Peter Theil, the other co-founder of PayPal. Levchin aims to make money by adding sponsored pictures in slide show image crawls. Currently, Slide and Yelp are based in San Francisco. SFGate.com has a detailed history of Levchin’s past.

Paypal, the online payment application for eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY), has massively expanded to other markets globally. PayPal now supports online transactions with 10 new currencies. Now PayPal customers can use the service in 17 different currencies and in 103 new markets. These countries include the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

“International expansion is a key part of PayPal’s growth strategy, and we are thrilled to expand our services to 103 markets and support 17 currencies worldwide” stated Senior VP of PayPal, Dana Stadler in a press release. “With these new offerings, PayPal continues to make domestic and cross-border trading easier and more convenient for its millions of customers around the globe.”

PayPal has added the following 10 currencies:

• Hong Kong Dollar,
• Danish Krone,
• Hungarian Forint,
• Czech Koruna,
• New Zealand Dollar
• Norwegian Krone,
• Polish Zloty,
• Singapore Dollar,
• Swedish Krona, and
• the Swiss Franc

These currencies are added on to the currently supported currencies: The US Dollar, Euros, Pounds, the Canadian Dollar, the Japanese Yen, the Australian Dollar, and Chinese RMB.

PayPal currently boasts 114 million customers and with these new currencies, the company will undoubtedly grow a lot more. Speaking of PayPal, how bout’ dem PayPal alumni?!