PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American company operating a worldwide online payment system that supports online money transfers. PayPal is one of the world's largest Internet payment companies. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and other commercial users, for which it charges a small fee in exchange for benefits.
Young Elon and his co-partner Peter Thiel showing off their finished product
How is Elon involved in PayPal?
Musk scored a net return of over $165 million after his financial services company, X.com, merged with PayPal – which was bought by eBay. Soon after the sale of Zip2, Musk invested $12 million of his own money into co-founding X.com, which he envisioned as the future of online banking. In early 2000, X.com merged with its rival Confinity, and the company was renamed PayPal. As the majority shareholder, Musk was ousted as CEO amid protracted boardroom squabbling. PayPal then accepted eBay’s offer to buy in July 2002 – against Musk’s advice. After the 1.5 billion deal finally went through, he came away with $180 million after taxes.