On the one hand, this is an inspiring business story... How a small group of entrepreneurs with no real finance experience went up against big banking and revolutionised the way we send money.
But there’s also a very dark business story here… how a company that promised so much has ended up ripping off its own users and being involved in countless scandals. There are very few companies with as many horror stories and unhappy customers as PayPal.
This is also a story about how PayPal faced fraudsters, gave away free money, nearly went bankrupt, and on multiple occasions hatched a secret plot to overthrow their own CEO. And yet despite all this controversy surrounding the company, hundreds of millions of people use PayPal every day to send money around the world.
The team behind PayPal have come to be known as the PayPal mafia, a network of powerful billionaires who are behind so many other huge internet companies - which means there’s an extreme amount of power in the hands of a very small group.
So it’s time we delve into the truth. Welcome to the insane true story of PayPal, and the original X.com.