Details

Industries

E-Commerce,Payments

Founded date

Dec 1, 1998

Number Of Employee

1 - 10

Operating Status

Active

Confinity was a mobile payment security company that built the product known as PayPal and later merged with/was acquired by X.com, which was later renamed PayPal.

Confinity was founded in December 1998 by [Max Levchin](/person/max-levchin), [Peter Thiel](/person/peter-thiel) and [Luke Nosek](/person/luke-nosek). The company developed a product called Fieldlink as a Palm Pilot payments system. Early investors included Nokia Ventures, Deutsche Bank, and Bell Melton, the founder of CyberCash.

Confinity abandoned Fieldlink and launched its milestone product PayPal in late 1999 when [David Sacks](/person/david-sacks) was hired as VP of Strategy. Confinity later merged with X.com, co-founded by [Elon Musk](/person/elon-musk), in March 2000 during the onset of the dot.com crash. The resulting business entity used the [PayPal](/organization/paypal) name going forward.