One of the more established fintechs – and perhaps most globally recognised – PayPal was originally founded by Peter Thiel , Luke Nosek and Max Levchin in December 1998 as Confinity , a company that developed security software for handheld devices . However , with that particular business model , the concept failed to take off , so the founders switched the company ’ s focus to digital wallets .
In March 2000 , still struggling to establish itself , Confinity merged with another early internet payment platform : X . com , headed up by Elon Musk . Musk became the CEO of the resulting company – PayPal – and , after much management wrangling due to leadership conflicts , Thiel briefly quit the company before returning as PayPal ’ s chairman . Musk continued as the company ’ s CEO until October 2002 , when it was sold to eBay for US $ 1.5bn in stock . Today , it is worth more than US $ 130bn .
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