* Can be used on any website that accepts credit cards
* Cannot be used to sign you up for a subscription through scams or hidden terms
* Cannot be charged more than the amount you intended to spend
* Can be set to expire after a short time
* Can be funded by bank transfer, eCheck, credit card or funds through selling items on eBay or your own website
* Is available instantly with just a few clicks
...was absolutely both unique and innovative. It existed nowhere else and offered compelling benefits. And they ran with it for 4 years. Innovative does not mean guaranteed to succeed, be profitable, and stay around forever.
Either you're not very imaginative when considering what it took to create this offering, the risks and costs involved, and what benefits it implied, or you have a petty bias against anything attached to the PayPal name. Either way, you've made no point.
Apple was not first to invent MP3 players or tablets. Amex's program was discontinued. Were you trying to attack your own two petty arguments against the one bullet point you decided to pull out of a broader comment?
What I was saying is that you're being petty and your comments were pointless. I'm still saying it. I made that quick list of things PayPal has tried because the parent commenters were "honestly curious" if PayPal has done anything since the eBay acquisition. They clearly have. Picking off a point and going "but that was discontinued" doesn't add a darned thing to the conversation.
It is fairly evident that you have an extreme PayPal bias and that you are arguing in desperation rather than logic.
Take a moment to think about the fact that you cited something completely un-innovative. Then think about the fact that not only was Paypal 6 years late to the party, but they couldn't even maintain it for more than 4 years.
Thus not only proving whatever extra "innovation" they had for their clone was not very innovative, they also failed on the execution. And to top it off, there are still others offering it.
And if you are going to argue that anything unique is innovative, I have a lollipop attached to wheels with a whistle at the center of the stick to sell you.
Hyperanalyzing the one bullet point is itself the petty and pointless act. Whether PayPal has done anything innovative in 10 years does not hinge on whether virtual MasterCard numbers worked out for them. It was a quick comment, written in 2 minutes, that you're now attempting to pull apart a single sentence of under a microscope. It's an ultimate display of pedantry.
Everyone else got the point, the ridiculousness of the implication that the company has been stagnant since the eBay acquisition, while in reality they've pushed every boundary of the original company -- geographically into every continent, web to mobile to brick-and-mortar, peer-to-peer personal into merchant services, mid-ticket to up to volume and down to micropayments, service to platform provider with PayPal X.
The whole original story got 87 votes. My quick comment rebuffing the idea PayPal has been stagnant got over 50. Most people seemed to appreciate the information it conveyed, imperfectly as any top-of-the-head list written in 2 minutes would. Only you felt the need to pull off a bullet point and make quips about it. You missed the point.
I spent 10 seconds writing the reply to the 1 bullet because that is what I knew about off the top of my head. I am not going to waste 20 minutes researching all your other bullet points that you probably just as sloppily cobbled together just to win an Internet argument.
It really doesn't matter if the original story got 87 votes, it is not an anti-paypal piece. It has become quite apparent that you are so desperate to win this debate that you can't even make a logical argument.
You would not have to research any of them unless you believed I was making it up, and PayPal did not enter retail, mobile, micropayments, platforms, etc. All innovating means is making changes in something established, trying new things. PayPal innovated itself. It's not the same company today as it was pre-eBay; it's entered new countries, new channels, new lines of business. That's the answer to the question of whether PayPal has innovated since eBay. There was never a debate. Nobody else saw a debate; I'm not trying to win one, just frustratedly curious why you are trying to create one, and letting that frustration get the better of me when I should just be ignoring it.
Where is it?