PayPal to Acquire VeriSign’s Payment Gateway Business

By Derek Iwasiuk
DomainInformer.com
October 12, 2005

eBay (www.paypal.com) and VeriSign (www.verisign.com) announced a strategic alliance that calls for the two companies to collaborate on payment services and security initiatives for e-commerce. Under the terms of the agreements, PayPal, an eBay company, will acquire VeriSign’s payment gateway business and combine it with PayPal’s leading merchant services platform.

VeriSign will also provide eBay and PayPal with a suite of security services that includes the deployment of two-factor authentication, a security system that gives customers a one-time password or digital certificate to help protect against online identity theft.

With the acquisition of VeriSign’s payment gateway, which processed more than $40 billion in total payment volume in 2004, PayPal plans to accelerate its merchant services business by expanding its customer base to tens of thousands of new small and medium-sized business customers online. 

The payment gateway is a real-time, scalable Internet payment platform that allows merchants to authorize, process and manage online payments. The combination of VeriSign’s payments gateway with PayPal’s existing services will provide merchants with multiple processing choices from a single provider, including VeriSign’s gateway, PayPal’s Website Payments Standard, Express Checkout or Website Payments Pro.

“VeriSign’s payment gateway is a popular and market-proven product that perfectly complements PayPal’s existing payment services,” said Jeff Jordan, president of PayPal. “We’re very excited about the opportunity to extend the benefits of PayPal’s services to the VeriSign customer base. This acquisition allows PayPal to give our customers more choice in payment services and grow our merchant services business even more quickly.”

“At eBay, we’re always looking for additional tools and technologies to improve the security of our community’s accounts and ensure the privacy of information.  Two-factor authentication will be another important way customers can shop safely on eBay and pay with PayPal,” said Rob Chesnut, senior vice president of trust and safety for eBay. “We’re thrilled to be working with VeriSign, and are proud to be one of the first e-commerce companies to give our customers access to two-factor authentication.”  

“The alliance between VeriSign and eBay brings together two leaders in online commerce. eBay’s deployment of two-factor authentication will represent one of the largest consumer authentication deployments in the industry,” said Stratton Sclavos, chairman and chief executive officer, VeriSign.

PayPal will pay approximately $370 million to purchase VeriSign’s payment gateway business, payable in cash and/or eBay stock. Including synergies with PayPal’s merchant services business, the payment gateway business is expected to generate an incremental $100 million of revenue at a 20 percent pro forma operating margin in 2006.