PayPal was established by a group that included Elon Musk and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. The company went public in 2002 and shortly after, it was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion to handle its transactions. PayPal provides an efficient online money transfer platform that helps people send money without sharing financial information. The company is a global payment platform, with 165 million active customer accounts, that is available in 203 markets and allows its customers to get paid in more than 100 currencies, withdraw funds and hold balances in their PayPal accounts. However, even though eBay's acquisition of PayPal made a lot of sense initially, as PayPal became its default payment processing service, activist investor Carl Icahn has been arguing that PayPal's development was being hindered by eBay and was pushing for a spin-off.