PayPal tops five million users: $1 billion moved to date

[December 18th 2000]

PayPal has announced it has reached more than five million registered users and has processed more than $1 billion in payments since launching just over a year ago. By adding more than 20,000 new users a day, PayPal has pulled well away from the competitive pack by offering fast, easy, safe and secure online payment processing for consumers and e-commerce sites. As a result, PayPal is the most heavily trafficked financial site on the Internet, with more visitors than any bank or brokerage site, according to PC Data Online.

"We've proven to our users, investors and competitors that PayPal is the clear market leader in the online payment services market," said Peter Thiel, chairman and co-founder of PayPal. "Reaching more than five million PayPal users demonstrates that the 'network effect' is clearly at work -- people want to use the online payment service their friends are using and businesses want to be a part of the network their customers are using."

The world's first and largest Web-based payment service, PayPal allows consumers and businesses to send and receive money funded from bank accounts, credit cards or their PayPal online accounts instantly and securely on the Internet.

"Whether they need to send money to a family member, buy something at an online auction or other e-commerce site, or make a quick and easy payment online for a business service received offline, people are joining the network with the most users," Thiel explained. "They're putting their trust in the service that pioneered email payments, the one with the longest track record and the most experience -- and that's PayPal."

Reaching these key metrics just a year after offering the service, PayPal has confirmed a prediction by Robert Simon, then CEO of dotBank (now Yahoo! PayDirect) -- the first company to reach five million users will become the clear market leader (Inter@ctive Week, 3/20/00).

Free to consumers and for personal use, there is no fee to send a payment through PayPal. Businesses and business users pay a transaction fee to receive payments, and qualify for additional Business and Premier features. More than 600,000 businesses and business users have opened such fee-paying accounts, and more than two-thirds of all PayPal payments generate transaction fees. PayPal users send approximately $7 million in more than 130,000 payments each day.

Links
PayPal		http://www.PayPal.com