PayPal – the story of the world’s biggest online payment system

 The story of PayPal is one of a quiet, but huge success. As usual, though, it was not all plain sailing. In fact, in 1999, it was voted one of the worst business ideas of the year. Mind you, the people who founded PayPal include some people who are the real visionaries of our times. They include Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Chad Hurley (YouTube founder), Reid Hoffmann (LinkedIn founder) and several others who have back stage passes in the corridors of Silicon Valley.

Now, PayPal is the third most popular payment option in the world, behind Visa and Mastercard.

On Cyber Monday in 2015 it made the record books by processing 450 transactions per second, or 1.6 million per hour. In 2016, the growth continued and now the company is on almost every website. Only a handful of countries do not allow the payment method.

To err is human, so they say, although in one case in 2013, the company credited one man with $92 quadrillion and it was several hours before the mistake was rectified.

This infographic takes a look at how PayPal made its way to the top of the online payments world and how it continues to grow bigger.