PayPal Watch

PayPal settles with N.Y. over gambling. Under the agreement, PayPal will no longer allow residents of New York State to use its online payment service for gambling. [CNET News.com]

EBay Wins Clearance for PayPal Acquisition. Online auctioneer eBay on Tuesday won clearance from U.S. antitrust authorities to proceed with its planned acquisition of online cash transfer service PayPal. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]

PayPal Wizard Now Available for FrontPage. A nice little tool that let's the 50,000 registered users of the PayPal Developer's Network quickly add PayPal support to their FrontPage-based Web sites. Includes support for one-click purchasing, a built-in shopping cart, and the ability to collect donations, sell subscriptions, and handle other recurring bills. Provided by AuctionMessager.

PayPal Announces Second Quarter Results. Impressive 11% quarter-to-quarter growth in transaction volume. Registered users base now at 17.8 million individuals. Nearly one in four transactions now involve one party outside the U.S. [Company Release]

PayPal, Stamps.com seal deal. The online payment company makes arrangements with Stamps.com that will allow users of its services to buy and print U.S. postage from their accounts. [CNET News.com]

Mac OS X Onlne Merchants Now Have PayPal Support. 4D announces the availability of 4D Business Kit 1.2. The software is Mac OS X native and enables users to create online storefronts. Payment transaction support includes modules for Paypal.

New York State Subpoenas PayPal. PayPal said it received a subpoena from the New York state attorney general's office related to its activities in the Internet gambling market. When it rains, it pours. [Wall Street Journal]

Shareholders sue PayPal, eBay. Legal woes continue to follow PayPal no matter where they go in the marketplace. [CNET News.com]

Application Trends Are Backwards. One of the things I noticed about all of the recent PayPal/EBay media coverage is that the media has PayPal's application usage trend backwards. Many reports talk about PayPal *already* deriving 60% of its business from auctions, implying an increasing overlap between PayPal and EBay (and an obvious rationale for the purchase.) A year ago, however, PayPal derived 70% of its business from auctions, implying increased usage in non-auction applications over the last 12 months. Hmmm.

EBay Says No to PayPal Gambling. Here's EBay dropping the first shoe on its recent acquisition of PayPal. I wonder what other ways it will scale back the normally aggressive PayPal to suit its needs?

EBay to Buy PayPal in $1.5 Billion Stock Deal. EBay Inc. said today that it would buy PayPal Inc. a stock swap worth about $1.5 billion, bringing under its own roof the online payment system already used by many eBay customers. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]

PayPal Shipping with UPS. PayPal forged a relationship to combine its online payment process with digital shipping tools courtesy of United Parcel Service (UPS). [InternetNews]

Wells Fargo to process PayPal payments. The banking giant will handle credit card transactions for the online payment company under a deal the two are expected to announce on Thursday. [CNET News.com]

PayPal Insiders File to Sell. Executives and early-stage investors in the online payment firm file to sell a big wad of stock. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]

New Patent Trouble for PayPal. Every one and their brother are now accusing PayPal of patent infringement. This time its Tumbleweed Communications (lawsuit filed) and NetMoneyln (accusation lodged). My question is how can something so simple (PayPal) violate so many patents?

Patent Suit Against PayPal Dropped. NEW YORK (AP) -- A patent lawsuit filed against online payment service PayPal Inc. has been dropped, the plaintiff said Monday. No real details on what the dispute was about. [New York Times: Technology]

MasterCard Backs Off PayPal in Row Over Online Charging. Lending Intelligence breaks the story that MasterCard and PayPal are great friends and the whole blow up was just a big misunderstanding. [Thanks to Alan Braverman for passing this along.]

PayPal Named Best eCommerce Solution by SIIA. By who? That's the Software and Information Industry Assocation. They also named AT&T Electronic Maintenance the best eBusiness solution, so they must have put some thought into this.

Name Your Own Price on PayPal. Wired is shocked, shocked, to report that sellers should not use PayPal to sell URLs to soft goods (that can be repeatedly downloaded without payment). What's worse, they report that all merchants should check that consumers actually paid for merchandise before handing it over. This breaking news seems to be oddly *consistent* with what PayPal has always recommended to merchants.

USA Today: MasterCard to stop third-party transactions. A new rule by MasterCard that becomes effective May 1st attempts to undercut consumer's ability to use PayPal. This is straight from the if-you-can't-beat-em-take-your-ball-and-go-home department.

PayPal achieves profitability. PayPal, in its first quarterly report as a public company, reported its first profitable quarter today. [Scott Loftesness]

PayPal Names Chief Operating Officer. David Sacks now has responsibility for product development and design, sales and marketing, business development, international, customer service, fraud operations, and HR functions at PayPal. In other words, he's the man. [ 03/19/02 PayPal Press Release]

PayPal Receives FDIC Advisory Opinion on Insurance for Customer Funds. FDIC Legal Opinion Holds That Funds Deposited by PayPal on Behalf of Customers At FDIC Member Institutions Would Qualify for Insurance On a Per-Customer Basis. [ 03/12/02 PayPal Press Release ]

PayPal Runs Up Against Competition. PayPal has reached a fork in the road. At one end lies an Internet success story; at the other is a bottomless pit. The service could be a test-market fall guy for major banks and credit cards cautiously waiting for the market to develop. [ Forbes Magazine ]

Feds: PayPal not a bank. Federal regulators have boosted the online payments company's contention that it is not a bank and shouldn't be regulated as one. [CNET News.com]