eBay and PayPal will separate on July 20th

Wednesday, July 1, 2015 - 10:29 by Mike Price

Online auction giant, eBay, and payments firm, PayPal, have been destined to separate for some time now, but a date for this division of businesses has now been set as July 20th, according to CBR.

If everything goes to plan and the various financial bodies involved in regulating the industry are satisfied with the plans, then the split will be completed next month and eBay shareholders will also get a stake in PayPal.

The story of eBay and PayPal is an intriguing one, as initially, the auction site offering shopping online to consumers in the UK and across the world was doing very well. It managed to acquire the fledgling payments firm at a time when it needed a secure platform for customers to carry out transactions.

In recent years, PayPal has grown rapidly while eBay has struggled to sustain the same levels of success it once enjoyed. This led to the decision that a split was necessary to sustain the expansion of the former, without having it hampered by the latter.

PayPal has been helped by the rise of mobile shopping, with a user base 165 million strong. In 2014, it managed to process $235 billion (£150 billion) with over a billion individual transactions carried out via portable devices.

The split should not have an immediate impact on customers of either company, meaning people will still be able to  shop online with eBay, while using PayPal to pay for the products they order.

However in the long term, there may be a more obvious alteration in the relative power of the companies. And so consumers will need to keep an eye out for how this ascendant payment provider fares, once it is uncoupled from its former parent firm.