From “beam money”
to “get paid back”

The oldest PayPal homepage we found is from October 13, 1999. It is one blue screen: a round logo with a swirled P, two empty fields labeled LOGIN NAME: and PASSWORD:, five links (HOME, ABOUT, DEMO, CONTACT, SIGN UP) and New User? Sign up now! in yellow. The browser tab reads PayPal "Instant Money. Anytime. Anywhere." The footer says 1999 © Confinity, Inc., a company registered in December 1998.^[1]

Look closely at the first sentence in the page’s code. The O in 0rganizer is a zero.

According to WIRED, the Palm sentence had already been tried with real money. In July 1999, three months before this capture, the magazine reported on PayPal’s launch party: a venture firm, Nokia Ventures, used the software to beam US$3 million to Confinity through Thiel's Palm Pilot. It took about five seconds.^[2]

Still, the second sentence on the page is the one that won. In 2014 the company called the move from Palm Pilots to email payments PayPal’s first pivot. It dated the first PayPal transaction on record to October 16, 1999, three days after this capture.^[3]

Ten months later, on August 15, 2000, the page has a white background, five blue tabs and a new logo: a blue-and-white X beside an italic PayPal. The image’s alt text says PayPal, a free service of X.com. The login box has two radio buttons, X PayPal and X Finance, and the news box is called X News. Confinity had merged with X.com in March 2000.^[1] The footer reads Copyright © 2000 X.com.

The Palm is gone. The headline is Send and request money online for FREE!, and a picture of banknotes offers Get $5.00 for signing up, plus $5 for each friend you refer! It is the first sign-up bonus in our captures.

There is no number yet, just Millions of users and growing! Under Spotlight, PayPal calls itself the #1 payment service on eBay, Trusted on over 1 million auctions. Three press quotes sit on the left. The Financial Times one is two words long: Killer App.

By June 17, 2001 the X has left the logo, the footer says Copyright © 2001 PayPal, and the vague Millions has a number: 8 million users and growing! The company had formally renamed itself PayPal, Inc. in February 2001.^[1] A row of six flags surrounds a link, Now International!. The footer makes a promise in small type, Every account insured against unauthorized transactions up to $100,000, and the page is hiring twice: a PayPal Jobs box lists Software Engineers, and a bold link says Engineering positions now available.

June 2002 has Over 16 million members worldwide! and a blue oval, Get $5 for signing up!. The eBay line now reads Trusted on over 5 million auctions.

PayPal was competing with eBay’s own payment service, Billpoint. Yet on September 30, 2001, 69.4% of eBay auctions accepted PayPal and 29.5% accepted eBay Payments, formerly Billpoint, according to PayPal’s IPO prospectus.^[1]

On October 3, 2002, eBay completed its purchase of PayPal.^[4] The June 2003 capture says Over 25 million members worldwide!. Under In the News it still recruits (Engineers: PayPal wants you!) and announces PayPal now available in Pounds and Euros. Below the footer links, three words in grey: an eBay company.

The October 16, 2004 homepage is the first one in our set with photographs. A smiling man fills the left of a wide banner, and three faint words, Fast, Safe and Easy, float behind The Way to Pay. Under it, two more photographs sit above three columns: Buyers, eBay Sellers, Merchants. The login sits in a box with a yellow frame. Next to it: Join PayPal Today, Now over 50 million accounts.

The counter has changed its unit again. It said users in 2001 and members in 2002 and 2003. Now it counts accounts. The footer credits the owner in blue, PayPal, an eBay company, and a badge says Powered by Sun.

In September 2005 the banner has a different man and one changed word. In 2004 the strip under the photo read PayPal is a global leader in online payments. In 2005 it reads PayPal is the global leader in online payments. The box beside the login says Now Over 78 million accounts.

The May 2006 banner sells privacy. A couple looks at a laptop next to Shop Without Sharing Your Financial Information and PayPal. Privacy is built in. A small box on the right says PayPal Mobile. The account box has reached Now Over 100 million accounts, and it says exactly that again in June 2007.

The 2007 page keeps the banner and swaps the mobile box for See how PayPal works on your phone. A language menu, U.S. English, sits above the tabs. The Merchants column has a line that dates it: Get paid by phone, fax, and mail with Virtual Terminal. At the bottom, a row of links runs from eBay and Half.com to Craigslist, Shopping.com and Skype; in 2007 it also has Kijiji Canada. In the code, the row’s hidden heading reads More eBay Sites.

By October 1, 2008 the logo has lost its light outline. PayPal’s 2014 brand announcement says its previous identity update came in 2007.^[5] Our June 2007 capture still shows the outlined logo, so the change falls between those two captures. The tabs now read Home, Personal, Business and Products & Services, and the login sits in a grey box with a yellow Log In button.

The middle of the page is empty. The page’s code loads a Flash file there, hero.swf, with a list of pictures to show; in our still it never plays, and the space stays blank. Under it, two short columns, Pay online and Get paid online, and a Top questions box that asks Why use PayPal when I have credit cards? The browser tab says Online Payment, Merchant Account - PayPal.

The February 2009 capture keeps the grey login box and the yellow button and adds a Developers tab. The empty panel is gone: Pay online and Get paid online now sit right under the tabs, next to a Pay With: row of card logos.

In June 2010 a blue banner says WELCOME TO PayPal and The world’s most-loved way to pay and get paid. Below it a woman holds a phone next to GROUP GIFT. NO ATM? SEND MONEY. and a blue seal: WIN $1,000 or an iPad. A second banner repeats the joke: OWE FRIENDS. NO ATM? SEND MONEY.

In the left column a box shows 220,233,743 and Accounts Worldwide. In the page’s code the same box holds a round 219,000,000. The still was made with the page’s scripts running, and it shows the exact figure.

Eight months later, in February 2011, the box counts something else: 87.2 million people worldwide using PayPal. The banner above it has moved on to shopping: SAVE EVEN MORE AT YOUR FAVORITE STORES.

On January 1, 2012 the box says +100 million people use PayPal worldwide. next to a boy in a mask and a red cape. The headline beside him is Hidden Powers, and the line under it is the 2006 privacy pitch in new words: Shop at millions of online stores without risking your identity. The left column repeats the 1999 sentence almost word for word: Send money to anyone with an email address.

The June 15, 2013 homepage drops the left column, the tabs and the counter. A photograph runs the full width of the screen: hands on a tablet showing a checkout page, next to a muffin tray on a kitchen counter. The headline is Check out at the counter. and the text under it says When your hands are full, let your fingers do the shopping. The login fields move into a thin grey bar at the very top, next to two tabs, Personal and Business.

Three drawings below the photo say Buy into being safer, Sell in fewer steps and Transfer money to friends. The middle picture’s alt text was written differently: Sell in less steps. The page’s code also carries a note between developers, TODO: need to be replaced by using textInput.tag in 2.2.3 release, and its first comment names the software that served it: script: sparta. Two years later, in June 2015, the same comment says script: node.

In June 2014 one big hero image fills the page: people around a table, one in a striped sweater. Across it, in thin capitals, THERE ARE NO BUYERS AND SELLERS and, much bigger, JUST PEOPLE. In the top corner sits a new logo, two overlapping P’s beside a rounder wordmark. PayPal announced the new identity on April 30, 2014, designed by fuseproject with phones in mind.^[5] The text of a capture from two days later explains it in the homepage’s own words: We’ve redesigned our "double P” monogram to reflect this connection. It was made to effortlessly fit in both large or small spaces (like our iPhone app).^[6]

A bar under the photo says Learn more about our new campaign. Behind it, the page’s code keeps a short manifesto that ends Money doesn’t make the world go round. People do. The code also carries this, in a comment only developers would see:

$$$$$$$\                     $$$$$$$\           $$\
$$  __$$\                    $$  __$$\          $$ |
$$ |  $$ |$$$$$$\  $$\   $$\ $$ |  $$ |$$$$$$\  $$ |
$$$$$$$  |\____$$\ $$ |  $$ |$$$$$$$  |\____$$\ $$ |
$$  ____/ $$$$$$$ |$$ |  $$ |$$  ____/ $$$$$$$ |$$ |
$$ |     $$  __$$ |$$ |  $$ |$$ |     $$  __$$ |$$ |
$$ |     \$$$$$$$ |\$$$$$$$ |$$ |     \$$$$$$$ |$$ |
\__|      \_______| \____$$ |\__|      \_______|\__|
                   $$\   $$ |
                   \$$$$$$  |
                    \______/

Now hiring @ http://jobs.ebaycareers.com/search/paypal-jobs

A grey strip tops the June 16, 2015 homepage: eBay and PayPal will be separate companies soon. We’ve updated the eBay and PayPal User Agreements and Privacy Policies. Below it, a blurred crowd and Pay securely. Here, there, anywhere. On July 20, 2015, PayPal announced that its separation from eBay was complete, as its shares began regular trading on Nasdaq.^[7] A capture from the next day, showing the UK version of the page, has the new wording: PayPal is now a separate company.

The October 20, 2016 homepage is white, and it explains itself with a line drawing. A thin orange-and-pink line runs from a face to a laptop, a card, a shield and a shopping cart marked PayPal Check out. Above it, the counter is back as a sentence with a menu in it: Join 188+ million people who use PayPal to, followed by Pay securely on millions of sites. The menu’s other choices, in the code, include Donate to a cause and Pay over time with PayPal Credit. Our February 2017 capture shows the same page.

June 2018 splits the screen in two. On the left, a woman with a phone in a café, Personal. On the right, a card reader on a counter, Business. Each half has a round + button. In the code, the Business panel behind its button lists Accept cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, PayPal Credit and much more. Below, a line in plain type: Send money to friends and family. The fine print says It's free to send money to friends and family in the U.S. when you use your bank account or PayPal balance.* Our June 2019 capture keeps both photos and both halves.

On June 16, 2020 the café photo is still there, under two new bars. A blue one at the very top says Earn up to $20 in Rewards. Terms apply. A black one under the menu says PayPal commits $530 Million to support Black businesses and communities.

Lower down, a pale strip headed Responding to the Coronavirus links to Apply for a Paycheck Protection Program Loan. Near the bottom, under Speedy checkout on millions of stores and apps worldwide., are the logos of stores that took PayPal, among them Hulu, eBay, Guess and Spotify.

The April 30, 2021 page trades photos for a drawing: two orange hands hold a phone with a stack of banknotes, a coffee cup, a QR code and a padlock on its screen. The headline is Send money and shop with one easy account, and the sign-up button is yellow. Further down, Pay in 4 splits a purchase into four payments. PayPal had announced in October 2020 that users could buy, hold and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.^[8] The 2021 page has a section for it: Crypto for the people is here, Start with as little as $1. Terms Apply.

In June 2022 the wordmark is gone from the header. The double P stands alone in the top-left corner. The headline is three words, Shop. Send. Manage., next to a QR code and a phone that says Hi there, Here’s what’s new. Its tiles show a PayPal balance of $151.68, Crypto at $22.05 and Rewards at $137.42. The browser tab names the country twice: Digital Wallets, Money Management, and More | PayPal US | PayPal US.

In June 2023 the page advertises $20 cash back for joining, activating the offer and making three qualifying purchases: Join PayPal. Earn $20 cash back. June 2024 runs the same headline with two extra words. The fine print changed more than the headline:

The 2024 photo’s alt text describes it in full: A fashionable woman jumping happily on her modern couch; beside her is a large plant on a glass side table and yellow ottoman.

The 2025 headline is Use PayPal Checkout and you could get paid back, with 100 days. 1000 winners daily. under it and a paragraph of rules that starts NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Below, The Great PayPal Checkout floats over lipstick, groceries, a handbag, a camera and a suitcase, with a QR code in the corner.

Now look at the logo in the corner of the June 2025 page. The double P is brighter than in 2022, and the buttons, Sign Up and Learn More, are black. It is the identity Pentagram redrew for PayPal in 2024.^[9] Our June 2024 capture doesn’t show it yet.

Logo – paypal.com, 2022 and 2025

June 2022

June 2025

The designers put a second brand in it. Where the bright blue P overlaps the deep blue one, they say, the overlap shows Venmo blue, a nod to the growing mobile app owned by PayPal. They also took yellow out of the palette, so the yellow payment buttons became black.^[9]

The 1999 page had two ways to move money: beam it from a Palm, or send it to an email address. The Palm left first. The 1999 email sentence turns up again, almost word for word, in our 2010 to 2012 captures; the 2014 and 2015 pages describe email transfers with new wording.

In 2000 the page paid $5.00 for signing up; in 2023 it offered $20 cash back, with conditions. By 2025 it asks people to check out with PayPal for a chance to get paid back, and it doesn’t mention email at all. The 1999 page offered to beam money from one Palm to another. The June 2025 capture has a QR code in the corner of its checkout campaign.