IAR: PayPal Expands Its Horizons Beyond eBay

PayPal finally opened its services up to merchant accounts, expanding the payment service from mostly person-to-person transactions to add business transactions traditionally done through credit cards. Industry analysts have collectively wondered why the firm didn't make more of an attempt to break into this market three years ago. Instead, the firm concentrated on serving eBay, the site that eventually acquired it.

Merchant service firm CyberSource will handle the shift for PayPal, indicating that the relevant systems, or at least the marketing efforts, had not yet been developed in-house. This marks a shift in PayPal's previous strategy of always building its own customer base.