“The payments industry… must be consolidated,” activist investor Carl Icahn says.

by Megan Geuss - Sept 30 2014

 

On Tuesday, eBay announced that in 2015 it would be splitting off its PayPal unit into a separate, publicly traded company. Investors lauded the move, sending eBay's stock price up nearly eight percent on the day, as of this writing.

PayPal has been an enormous player in the online payments and mobile payments sectors, but for years eBay's CEO John Donahoe resisted the clamor from investors to split PayPal into its own company. But after conferring with the company's board of directors, eBay has now changed its tune.

eBay acquired PayPal back in 2002, and it has been the company's fastest-growing segment, the Associated Press reported.

According to the company's own metrics, PayPal revenue over the last 12 months grew by approximately $7.2 billion, 19 percent more than the same period a year earlier.

 

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