I Marketplace Moments: Building eBay

2005

eBay acquired classified-listing site Gumtree in May and internet communications business Skype in October. Four years later, Skype was sold to a group of investors led by Silver Lake, with eBay retaining a 30% stake in the business.

2002

eBay acquired payments solution provider PayPal in July, marking one of the most prominent investments in the marketplace’s history.

2001

A luxurious Gulfstream, a favorite private jet for the rich and famous, was sold on eBay for $4.9 million in the third quarter of 2001. At the time, this was the highest-known sale price for any product ever auctioned online.

Marketplace Moments: Building eBay

Global ecommerce platform eBay connects millions of buyers and sellers worldwide. Here’s a look at the biggest business milestones of one of the world’s largest marketplaces. 2011

In a year of acquisitions, eBay invested heavily in expanding its technologies. In March, it acquired ecommerce specialist GSI Commerce, now known as eBay Enterprise. Between April to July, eBay bought a majority stake in Turkey’s principal online marketplace GittiGidiyor, acquired the ecommerce toolset Magento, and bought a mobile carrier billingbased payments platform, Zong.

2014

In July, eBay partnered with Sotheby’s to offer mid-priced works of art in a virtual live-auction format. A well-preserved copy of Superman was sold in August for $3.2 million on the marketplace, breaking records for the most expensive comic book ever sold at the time.

2000

eBay Motors, the platform’s automotive marketplace, launched in April. In November, a fixed-priced feature, “Buy It Now,” was introduced, enabling users to purchase items instantly at set prices. By 2006, the automotive business had hit two million in passenger vehicle sales.

1998

Meg Whitman joined the business in February as President and CEO. She is best known for taking the firm from $5.7 million to $8 billion in sales from 1998 to 2008. In September 1998, eBay went public, listing its shares on Nasdaq.

1997

AuctionWeb was officially renamed and rebranded to eBay in September. Omidyar named it eBay after his first choice Echo Bay was already taken.

1996

By June—less than a year since inception—the platform had hit $7.2 million in the total value of merchandise sold. Omidyar hired Jeff Skoll as President, and the duo rented a small suite in San Jose, California. The suite is now known as Building 6 on the current eBay campus.

1995

French-born Iranian-American Pierre Omidyar established “AuctionWeb” in September as a site “dedicated to bringing together buyers and sellers in an honest and open marketplace.” The entrepreneur’s first sale was a broken laser pointer. The billionaire is now a director emeritus and had an estimated net worth of $10.2 billion as of September 16, 2022.

Pierre Omidyar

Meg Whitman Devin Wenig

Jamie Iannone

2022

In June, the eBay and GLIDE’s annual Power of One Charity Auction Lunch with investing legend Warren Buffett closed for a record bid of $19 million. The winning bid and Grand Finale of the annual lunch surpassed the previous record of $4.57 million, paid by crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun in 2019. eBay also acquired KnownOrigin, an NFT marketplace, as well as announced a partnership with U.K. reality show Love Island, becoming the show’s first-ever pre-loved fashion partner. The platform recorded 138 million active buyers worldwide and approximately 1.6 billion live listings as of June 30. 2015

To focus on opportunities in their respective markets, eBay and PayPal spun off as two independent companies. By July, both firms were trading separately on Nasdaq. In the same month, Devin Wenig was appointed as eBay’s new and fourth CEO.

2017

eBay introduced a series of digital features in 2017. After launching the personalized homepage for customers in March, the marketplace announced guaranteed delivery on 20 million items in three days or less, a price match guarantee in the U.S. as well as AI-enabled image search on listings. The platform also launched its Authenticate program, guaranteeing the authenticity of luxury bags sold on eBay.

2019

In November, eBay for Charity hit $1 billion in total funds raised for charities globally, a target that was set for 2020. At the time, over 83,500 global charities were registered on the platform.

2020

In February, eBay sold StubHub to viagogo for over $4 billion. Jamie Iannone took the reigns as CEO in April, having previously served as the Chief Operating Officer of Walmart eCommerce. In July, eBay announced the sale of its Classified business to online classifieds specialist Adevinta in a deal valued at approximately $9.2 billion, making eBay the largest shareholder of the company.

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Fueling the Growth of Fintech

Amnah Ajmal, Mastercard’s Executive Vice President of Market Development for EEMEA, explains how the global payments powerhouse is supporting and accelerating the rise of fintech in the region.

EEMEA’s fintech landscape is evolving at a phenomenal pace to bring more people into the digital economy. How is Mastercard using acquisitions to fuel fintech growth and support the industry as it advances? At Mastercard, we continue to strengthen our own in-house capabilities and solutions, but at the same time, we do a lot of acquisitions to make sure we keep up with this pace of growth. To give you a few examples, we acquired a firm called SessionM, which is a loyalty provider behind brands like Starbucks and L’Oreal. It provides real time personalization and contextualization, which is so powerful. We have also acquired CipherTrace, a cryptocurrency intelligence firm which has insights into 900 cryptocurrencies.

When you look at these assets and capabilities that we have acquired, and you power them with our data, our network, and our infrastructure, the impact that we can have on digital transformation and inclusion is huge. What other factors are shaping Mastercard’s strategy when it comes to supporting the growth of fintech in EEMEA? At Mastercard, we have a mission to include one billion people and 50 million SMEs in the digital economy by 2025, with a special focus on women entrepreneurs. I believe all of us have a role to play in this, and together we can get it done. Towards this goal, we are following an innovative strategy based on collaboration. We work with fintechs across 172 markets in the world and help them to scale by connecting them to larger organizations and integrating them into our products and capabilities. This is really important as when we connect the large organizations to fintechs the entire ecosystem comes together to provide a superior consumer value proposition and we also boost inclusion for SMEs. What tools and services does Mastercard provide for innovators in the fintech space? First of all, consumers need

simplicity, choice, and a flexible means to pay, which is safe and secure anywhere, anytime. Then, if you look at SMEs, they need to bring the cost of operations down and they need to increase their sales. With these requirements in mind, we develop solutions by collaborating across sectors with different players in the industry, including retailers, fintech, telcos, governments, and banks. As part of Mastercard’s efforts to encourage Amnah Ajmal, EVP of Market Development for EEMEA, collaboration in the fintech Mastercard space, the company staged its Collaborate to Innovate event on 28th and 29th September. The event saw 30+ leaders from multiple sectors across EEMEA come together on one stage to discuss leadership and the digital and business landscapes. Startups also had the opportunity to present their ideas to a judging panel, and gain access to Mastercard’s product suites and network of experts. When it comes to fintech in EEMEA, Mastercard’s role is connecting people to possibilities and business to opportunities. www.mastercard.com