PayPal

What Does PayPal Mean?

PayPal is an online service allowing users to transfer money without sharing financial information with the recipient. Users pay for transactions through credit/debit cards, bank accounts, PayPal accounts or financing.

Techopedia Explains PayPal

PayPal was founded in 1998 by Max Levchin and Peter Theil. It was acquired by eBay Corporation in 2002.

PayPal allows individuals and businesses to securely transfer funds online. It also charges a small fee to handle payment processing; this may be paid by users, online vendors, auction websites and others.

PayPal funds may be received through checks, PayPal accounts or bank accounts. In certain cases, PayPal may charge a fee to receive funds, depending on the dollar amount. Fees vary according to the currency, payment options, sender/recipient country, amount sent and the recipient account type.

EBay purchases also may be made by credit card through PayPal’s marketplace; however, there are additional fees when buyers and/or sellers use different currencies.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ??a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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