PayPal not as safe as everyone thinks?

PayPal Discloses High Rate Of Chargebacks
The Banking Channel

Oct 03 2001 : PayPal's move to file for an IPO at
this time, has mystified analysts, but may be
related to its USD 8.9 million in chargebacks from
unauthorized credit card use in 2000, which led to
a fine from MasterCard. In its filing, PayPal states
that its liability for chargebacks from fraudulent
transactions could cost it the right to accept
credit card payments, which comprised 50.5 per
cent of its business in the quarter to June 30.
Since the firm has enough funds to remain in
business for two years without new funding,
Avivah Litan, of Gartner, notes, "they have cash,
so this doesn't compute. This is the worst
possible time for an IPO".

Apart from the risk of online fraud, PayPal faces
competition from Citigroup, which is co-marketing
its C2it service with AOL Time Warner and
Microsoft, and can quickly gain substantial
market share. IDC analyst, Ian Rubin, expects
further competition to emerge, as "eventually
some of the incumbents like American Express,
Visa and MasterCard will either create their own
products, or evolve their credit cards to do
something that will compete head-to-head with
PayPal". Rubin also notes, "P2P online payments
are kind of in vogue right now, but I don't see them
necessarily having a long shelf life".

PayPal's filing also indicates that its undefined
status under state, federal and global financial
regulations, especially in light of US, and
international, regulation of Internet transactions,
could lead to penalties. For this reason, Litan
questions PayPal's filing for an IPO, since "they're
not likely to raise very much money, and now they
subject themselves to public reporting and the
whole overhead of being a public company".
PayPal itself refused to comment on the filing,
due to being in an official "quiet period" with the
SEC, but is known to have had USD 134.6 million
of cash and short-term securities, at June 30,
2001.

FYI

Tim