Introduction to PayPal

Founded in December 1998 and headquartered in San Jose, California, PayPal is a company that offers a secure service through which funds can be transferred from one PayPal account to another.

Technically speaking, no funds are actually transferred. PayPal is just a running total of how much one account was given from another and vice versa. It is not until someone "withdraws money" that funds are actually "moved".

The transfer can take 3 to 4 business days if transferring money to your bank account and it is guaranteed. PayPal will transfer funds unless the buyer has a credit line (or amount in their bank account) to make the transfer. And No, PayPal is not a bank. Thus, their accounts are not federally insured in the same way as a traditional bank account, however they do offer their own private insurance.

Currently there are over 179 million active customer accounts on PayPal. There’s no charge to the buyer to pay for an online purchase or to send money to anyone. Click here for a chart on How PayPal Serves Consumers and Merchants.

In 2015, PayPal's total revenue was $9.24 Billion. The total payment volume was $282 Billion. Total Payment Volume is the value of payments, net of payment reversals, successfully completed through Paypal's Payment Platform. In 2015, 17 Million new customer accounts were created. There were 418,000 charities that used PayPal to accept donations. There were 66 Million individual payments that were processed in 2015 specifically for charities via PayPal.

As you can see, PayPal is widely used by many website owners and businesses when making transactions online. So it is important to get up to speed on PayPal and learn to understand and leverage it more.