eBay Spins Off PayPal

PayPal is an independent company once again.

At $46.6 billion, PayPal would have a greater market capitalization than that of eBay, whose value will shrink to around $34 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. PayPal will begin trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker “PYPL,” returning to its roots under the same ticker it had before it was acquired by eBay in 2002. It’s a sure sign that investors are seeing growth potential in PayPal, a company that boasted 169 million users and processed $1.1 billion in payments in the second quarter, with transaction volume up 27% over the prior year, the company said recently. The increasing shift for shoppers toward payment channels such as mobile devices, as detailed in a PWC retail report, creates a prime environment for PayPal to thrive in.

PayPal launched in 1998 as Confinity and helped make homocon Peter Thiel a billionaire.

Tech Industry Coalition Issues Statement Calling For Full Federal LGBT Rights

In response to the ongoing RFRA battles, a coalition of over 100 major tech industry corporations has issued a joint statement calling for full federal LGBT anti-discrimination protections.

The values of diversity, fairness and equality are central to our industry. These values fuel creativity and inspiration, and those in turn make the U.S. technology sector the most admired in the world today. We believe it is critically important to speak out about proposed bills and existing laws that would put the rights of minorities at risk. The transparent and open economy of the future depends on it, and the values of this great nation are at stake.

Religious freedom, inclusion, and diversity can co-exist and everyone including LGBT people and people of faith should be protected under their states’ civil rights laws. No person should have to fear losing their job or be denied service or housing because of who they are or whom they love. However, right now those values are being called into question in states across the country. In more than twenty states, legislatures are considering legislation that could empower individuals or businesses to discriminate against LGBT people by denying them service if it they felt it violated their religious beliefs.

To ensure no one faces discrimination and ensure everyone preserves their right to live out their faith, we call on all legislatures to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes to their civil rights laws and to explicitly forbid discrimination or denial of services to anyone. Anything less will only serve to place barriers between people, create hurdles to creativity and inclusion, and smother the kind of open and transparent society that is necessary to create the jobs of the future. Discrimination is bad for business and that’s why we've taken the time to join this joint statement.

Signees include Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, Yahoo, Netflix, Intuit, Uber, Salesforce, Cisco Systems, and PayPal. Hit the link for the full list.

Tech Giants Denounce RFRA Bills

Via press release:

The values of diversity, fairness and equality are central to our industry. These values fuel creativity and inspiration, and those in turn make the U.S. technology sector the most admired in the world today. We believe it is critically important to speak out about proposed bills and existing laws that would put the rights of minorities at risk. The transparent and open economy of the future depends on it, and the values of this great nation are at stake.

Religious freedom, inclusion, and diversity can co-exist and everyone including LGBT people and people of faith should be protected under their states’ civil rights laws. No person should have to fear losing their job or be denied service or housing because of who they are or whom they love. However, right now those values are being called into question in states across the country. In more than twenty states, legislatures are considering legislation that could empower individuals or businesses to discriminate against LGBT people by denying them service if it they felt it violated their religious beliefs.

To ensure no one faces discrimination and ensure everyone preserves their right to live out their faith, we call on all legislatures to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes to their civil rights laws and to explicitly forbid discrimination or denial of services to anyone. Anything less will only serve to place barriers between people, create hurdles to creativity and inclusion, and smother the kind of open and transparent society that is necessary to create the jobs of the future. Discrimination is bad for business and that’s why we've taken the time to join this joint statement.

The statement is signed by top executives from eBay, Paypal, Zillow, Twitter, AirBnB, Cisco, SalesForce, Zynga, Yelp, Affirm, Square, Lyft, and many others.

Google Goes After PayPal

TechCrunch reports on another announcement out of Google's developers conference.

Flying under the radar amid a flurry of announcements from today’s Google I/O developer conference is the bigger news of how Google is stepping up its efforts to compete with online payment giants, such as PayPal. It plans to do so with a revamped checkout process for the web, mobile web, within mobile applications running on Android, and more. It’s a proposed death to PayPal by a thousand cuts, leveraging everything from Chrome to Android and even Gmail. What Google hasn’t quite worked out yet is how all this will tie together in the long run, but you can see the plan beginning to form.