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Israel Science & Technology: Paypal in Israel

(March 2015)

In it's first major acquisition of an Israeli firm, Paypal purchased Fraud Sciences in a cash deal valued at $169 million in late January 2008. The ease with which money is transfered with Paypal's service makes it a prime target for phishing scams and fraud.  Paypal and their parent company eBay were interested in the tools and analytics developed by Fraud Sciences in order to differentiate between real and fraudulent transactions on their websites.  The CEO and Founders of Fraud Science accepted jobs with Paypal's technology and fraud management teams.  A Paypal fraud and risk assessment center was established in Tel Aviv after the purchase of Fraud Sciences. 

Paypal announced the establishment of a cyber security center in Israel in March 2015, centered around Beersheba based startup CyActive.  Paypal purchased CyActive, a predictive malware detection service, earlier in 2015 and will use their framework and operations to jump-start a large cyber security complex.  Techcrunch Magazine reported that Paypal purchased CyActive for $60 million, but noted that this figure was “speculative.” 

The Senior Vice President of Payment Services at Paypal, James Barrese, stated during an interview with TechCrunch that Paypal will “continue to make significant investments,” in the Israeli economy.  According to Barrese, the acquisition of CyActive was predominantly for protecting Paypal's network and generally making transactions more secure. 


Sources: TechCrunch (January 28, 2008); Reuters ( March 11, 2015)