eBay just got even more powerful

Spends $370 million for PayPal rival

Monday, October 10, 2005 by Tarkus | Discussion: Internet

eBay plans to pay $370 million for an online payments service operated by VeriSign, as part of a broader agreement between the two companies, the auction giant said Monday.

According to the two companies, VeriSign's payment gateway business, which allows small businesses to accept credit card and other payment types online, processed more than $40 billion in customer transactions last year. eBay sees the service as a way to expand its own PayPal transactions division to a new category of small- and medium-size business customers.

The VeriSign service "perfectly complements PayPal's existing payment services," PayPal President Jeff Jordan said in a statement. "This acquisition allows PayPal to give our customers more choice in payment services and grow our merchant services business even more quickly."
thomassen
Reply #1 Friday, December 16, 2005 8:58 PM
PayPal is owned by eBay?
Kevin_C
Reply #2 Saturday, December 17, 2005 7:53 PM
PayPal is owned by eBay?


Yup, E-Bay bought pay-pal quite a few years back.. Makes sense if you think about it. Why not make money on the payments for the items you're making money on the sale of (say that 3 times quickly).
terpfan1980
Reply #3 Saturday, December 17, 2005 8:49 PM
PayPal is owned by eBay?


As f0r3 answered, PayPal was acquired by eBay a few years back. I was somewhat surprised that the deal passed judicial/regulatory review, but it did.

And when I say I was somewhat surprised, it wasn't because the two company's businesses overlapped that much, but more because it made eBay just that much bigger and stronger, and took a lot of choice away from eBay's customers.

The regulatory agencies that oversaw the deal didn't see it as a problem though, and PayPal has operated as a subsidiary of eBay for a while now.


This new deal is a bit worrisome as yet again it consolidates more power for eBay/PayPal, but at this point I suspect it will go through and the market will consolidate that much more.

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