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PayPal

PayPal

software
Last discussed Oct 18, 2026

A digital payments platform that also offers cryptocurrency services including a stablecoin.

How PayPal compares

8 creators weighed in
Stripe Direct rival
online payments for businesses

PayPal works in almost every country; Ali uses it as a fallback when Stripe is not available in your region.

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5 creators
Ali Abdaal

"If you are not in one of these countries, then Stripe is not yet accepted in your payment region, and you can probably sign up to PayPal, which is accepted in like almost every country on Earth."

Positioned as secondary fallback to Stripe

HS
Harry Stebbings

"Stripe and PayPal no more it would seem. Deal is off. I think it's as simple as price."

Discussed in context of failed acquisition talks with Stripe

JC
Jason Calacanis

"Stripe and the private equity fund Advent are jointly offering to acquire PayPal for about 60 bucks a share. PayPal — 439 million consumer accounts."

Compared to Stripe — PayPal has the consumer side, Stripe has the merchant side

John Coogan

"Stripe is offered to buy PayPal. PayPal is a sprawling legacy fintech with 25,000 employees, decades of technical debt."

Being compared to Stripe as a potential acquisition target

This Week in Startups

"PayPal's share price peaked above 300 back in the 2021-2022 era and they're going to go private maybe for 16 and a half bucks a share. Kind of a shocking decline in worth."

Compared to Stripe as a more dynamic private company

online marketplace for sellers

PayPal started as a small tool for eBay sellers, then grew. Shaan says it won by focusing on that niche instead of going big from the start.

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2 creators
Shaan Puri

"Here was PayPal, this little tool for eBay sellers — it's like the niche within the niche. And of course now PayPal can do a lot more than it did when it started, but it went after that very small market initially."

Compared to Elon's original X.com vision (full banking platform) — PayPal succeeded by focusing on the small eBay seller niche instead

JI
Jared Isaacman

"They were focused on all um you know, what we considered like the sexier form of commerce, the e-commerce, you know, where people are buying stuff on the internet"

PayPal focused on e-commerce while Shift4 focused on in-person transactions; PayPal had to sell to eBay while Shift4 stayed independent

podcast about great companies

PayPal processes similar payment volume to Stripe but is valued at roughly 1/3 of Stripe's market cap.

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2 creators
HS
Harry Stebbings

"Ever since the PayPal mafia walked out, it's been just a revolving door of executives and is a real mess — they've dissipated their opportunity."

Being acquired by Stripe; processes similar payment volume to Stripe but valued at roughly 1/3 of Stripe's market cap

DF
David Friedberg

"eBay is notorious for having bought and then sold a number of big businesses. They bought PayPal and then later spun it out and divested."

Mentioned alongside Skype and StubHub as businesses eBay acquired and later sold

What creators say

Showing every creator card. Back to the faster view
GL
Greg LaVecchia
mentioned
Used for: Receiving early business payments.

"Every day I would tell the PayPal to move money over to the TD student bank account."

More from Greg LaVecchia →
TA
Terry Angelos
mentioned
vs: Compared with Stripe Link and Shop Pay

"Then you have PayPal, which has got over 400 million accounts... But they have on the order of 30 million merchants."

More from Terry Angelos →
GH
George Hahn
mentioned

"PayPal and Shopify, they don't care. Like, they make money as long as money flows."

More from George Hahn →
Jason Lemkin
mentioned

"Of course, Stripe and PayPal lean into this. It benefits them."

More from Jason Lemkin →
+1 more mention from Jason

"PayPal did it. They found whatever his name is out on his Montana ranch to come back in and run PayPal."

Shaan Puri
mentioned
vs: Compared to Elon's original X.com vision (full banking platform) — PayPal suc...

"Here was PayPal, this little tool for eBay sellers — it's like the niche within the niche. And of course now PayPal can do a lot more than it did when it started, but it went after that very small market initially."

More from Shaan Puri →
TT
Tomasz Tunguz
mentioned
Praised: Friendly, approachable name that signals its purpose clearly vs: Compared favorably to Napster as an example of good vs. bad naming

"PayPal was a very friendly name. It was the friend that helps you pay."

More from Tomasz Tunguz →
Max Levchin
mentioned
Used for: Digital payments without requiring anonymity, enabling everyday online purchases Praised: Realized anonymity was not a requirement for digital payments, focused on con... vs: Compared to DigiCash's blind signatures approach which prioritized anonymity

"The big innovation of PayPal was what if we don't care about anonymity at all. In fact, people don't. They just need to pay for their coffees or their online purchases."

More from Max Levchin →
HS
Harry Stebbings
mentioned
vs: Discussed in context of failed acquisition talks with Stripe

"Stripe and PayPal no more it would seem. Deal is off. I think it's as simple as price."

More from Harry Stebbings →
+1 more mention from Harry

"They need money to buy PayPal. They need money to buy what was it — Open Router."

RO
Rory O'Driscoll
mentioned
vs: Contrasted with Stripe's OpenRouter acquisition as a consolidation play vs. a...

"At the same time, they're talking about a PayPal acquisition, which is very much — we own this space already, let's buy these guys, fold them into what we already have, and just make a ton of money consolidating."

More from Rory O'Driscoll →
Joe Lonsdale
mentioned
Used for: Fraud detection and prevention

"Before we started Palantir, the thing we'd learned how to do was stop the fraud service at PayPal. The Chinese and Russian mafia were stealing all of our money and made our competitors go bankrupt. I was just an intern back then, and when we were ..."

More from Joe Lonsdale →
+2 more mentions from Joe

"At PayPal we had to stop the Chinese and Russian mafia from stealing all of our money. We got to know all the guys who were helping us arrest the b..."

"The DNA of Palantir came out of the anti-fraud work at PayPal, right? The Chinese and Russian mafia were stealing massive amounts of money from Pay..."

JC
Jason Calacanis
mentioned
Praised: 439 million consumer accounts, owns Venmo and Braintree vs: Compared to Stripe — PayPal has the consumer side, Stripe has the merchant side

"Stripe and the private equity fund Advent are jointly offering to acquire PayPal for about 60 bucks a share. PayPal — 439 million consumer accounts."

More from Jason Calacanis →
John Coogan
mentioned
vs: Being compared to Stripe as a potential acquisition target

"Stripe is offered to buy PayPal. PayPal is a sprawling legacy fintech with 25,000 employees, decades of technical debt."

More from John Coogan →
Jordi Hays
mentioned
vs: Being acquired by Stripe; compared to Apple Pay, Shop Pay, Klarna as competitors

"Stripe is offered to buy PayPal. It's down over 80% since the pandemic highs. Still generating $5.5 billion in free cash flow. This is a $50 billion company."

More from Jordi Hays →
DL
David Lieb
mentioned

"This is actually an idea that I remember hearing about 10 years ago from Max Levchin, one of the founders of PayPal. They had a big fraud problem at PayPal when they first launched, but they didn't know the patterns to look for. So what they did i..."

More from David Lieb →
KS
KR Sridhar
mentioned

"PayPal's entire business is that data center because it's all about transactions and all those transactions are happening in a data center. They did not have power in Utah and they needed power, so they relied on us. That was our first application..."

More from KR Sridhar →
DF
David Friedberg
mentioned
vs: Mentioned alongside Skype and StubHub as businesses eBay acquired and later sold

"eBay is notorious for having bought and then sold a number of big businesses. They bought PayPal and then later spun it out and divested."

More from David Friedberg →
SM
Sebastian Mallaby
mentioned

"He was an early early part of the PayPal team with Max Levchin and Peter Thiel and he went through that journey."

More from Sebastian Mallaby →
EG
Elad Gil
mentioned
Used for: Historical example of competitor merger vs: Merged with X.com to avoid competition

"That actually was X.com and PayPal in the 90s, right? Elon Musk, you know, were running different companies and they merged because they said we're people doing this. Why fight?"

More from Elad Gil →
Tim Ferriss
mentioned

"The common held belief after PayPal's sale to eBay that fraud will kill you in the payment space."

More from Tim Ferriss →

"PayPal reduced its fraud team by a gigantic amount and reduced their fraud losses by $700 million in a single year just by having AI start recognizing patterns faster"

More from The Game w/ Alex Hormozi →
Peter Diamandis
mentioned

"He just sold PayPal to eBay and he didn't do that. He ended up joining our board at X Prize."

More from Peter Diamandis →
KR
Keith Rabois
mentioned

"Peter Teal and Max Levchin marshaled an incredible density of talent. So it allowed PayPal to succeed where possibly we wouldn't have and these people went on with interesting ideas, ambition and talent to build epic companies."

More from Keith Rabois →
EJ
Eric Jorgenson
mentioned

"The fact that he did Tesla and SpaceX after PayPal and after Zip2 as a young young guy."

More from Eric Jorgenson →
TBPN
mentioned

"PayPal started originally the idea was these PDAs had they didn't have like tap to pay or anything like that, RFID."

More from TBPN →

"You are sort of embarrassingly successful investing in like Stripe and LinkedIn and Facebook and Google and PayPal and Airbnb"

More from Uncapped with Jack Altman →
AM
Amjad Masad
mentioned

"you know fintech PayPal plaid is a customer I really can't think hotels I can't think of anything that any company that is not really impacted by this"

More from Amjad Masad →
JI
Jared Isaacman
mentioned
vs: PayPal focused on e-commerce while Shift4 focused on in-person transactions; ...

"They were focused on all um you know, what we considered like the sexier form of commerce, the e-commerce, you know, where people are buying stuff on the internet"

More from Jared Isaacman →
Codie Sanchez
mentioned

"Where are small businesses that you know you already spend money on? Well, probably in your Venmo and your PayPal, right?"

More from Codie Sanchez →
Marques Brownlee
mentioned

"They said, no problem. We take PayPal. So, I had to open up PayPal on my computer, send the money to Vertu"

More from Marques Brownlee →
HS
Harry Stebbings
critical

"Ever since the PayPal mafia walked out, it's been just a revolving door of executives and is a real mess — they've dissipated their opportunity."

"PayPal's share price peaked above 300 back in the 2021-2022 era and they're going to go private maybe for 16 and a half bucks a share. Kind of a shocking decline in worth."

Sponsored mentions

These creators mentioned this product during a paid promotion

This Week in Startups recommends sponsored

"PayPal Checkout is a trusted conversion engine fueled by 400 million active PayPal and Venmo accounts. When you add pay later, you turn holiday shoppers into regulars. PayPal is built for all business. Get started at paypal.com/business."

+2 more episodes
JC
Jason Calacanis sponsored

"PayPal, my favorite way to settle up. They had a great lounge on site at the summit where everybody got to hang out and get those beautiful embossed luggage tags, and they hosted the payments and fintech dinner which was a huge hit."

About this data

  • ✓44,000+ mentions extracted from real podcast transcripts
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