96 Million Paypal account holders !

PayPal, an online electronic account used as an alternative to payment
cards on the Internet, reported revenue exceeding $1 billion for the first
time in 2005, which is up 47% from the year before, according to
U.S.-based parent company eBay Inc. In the fourth quarter of 2005, 35.8%
of PayPal?s $304.4 million in revenue came from outside the U.S. There
were 96.2 million individuals with PayPal accounts at the end of the year,
a 51% increase from 63.8 million at the end of 2004, and 28.1 million of
those accountholders made PayPal transactions in the last three months of
2005, eBay says. ?The vision for PayPal is to become the global online
payment standard,? Margaret Whitman, eBay president and CEO, told
financial analysts this week. PayPal is mainly used to make purchases on
eBay, an online auction service with sites in some two dozen countries. Of
all PayPal purchases made in the fourth quarter of 2005, 69% represented
purchases through eBay auction sites, down slightly from 71% in the fourth
quarter of 2004. In the UK, eBay reported, nearly three of four eBay
transactions were settled with PayPal in the year?s final quarter. In the
fourth quarter, eBay reported net revenues from its auction sites of
$999.6 million, of which $473.5 million, or 47.3%, came from sites outside
the U.S. eBay says it had 180.6 million registered users at the end of
2005, up 33% from 135.5 million a year earlier. Active users, those who
bought or sold an item on eBay in the past year, reached 71.8 million at
the end of 2005, a rise of 28% from 56.1 million a year earlier.
1/19/2006 CardLine Europe
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