Who bought PayPal

eBay bought PayPal in October 2002 in a deal worth $1.5 billion, and later spun it off as an independent company in 2015.

PayPal began in December 1998 as Fieldlink, set up by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel and Luke Nosek. After a merger, the business took the PayPal name in 2001 and listed publicly in 2002, raising $70.2 million in its IPO, shortly before eBay acquired it.

• The eBay acquisition: eBay purchased PayPal in 2002 so it could serve as the main way buyers paid on eBay's online auction marketplace.
• Years under eBay: PayPal ran as an eBay subsidiary for more than a decade.
• The 2015 spinoff: eBay separated PayPal in 2015, turning it into a standalone publicly listed company.
• Ownership today: PayPal Holdings, Inc. trades on NASDAQ under the ticker PYPL. It has no single controlling owner and is held by many shareholders, with institutional investors such as The Vanguard Group among the holders.

For a wider PayPal overview covering its services, the short answer on ownership is that eBay was the buyer in 2002, but PayPal has not belonged to eBay since the 2015 separation.