Billpoint

"Even Musk, for all his boasts, was clear that X.com and Confinity represented evolutions, rather than revolutions, on the era’s payment technology. “It wasn’t even that we invented money transfer. We just made it useful,” Musk said. “Other companies had the idea of doing payments before Confinity or X.com, they just didn’t do it right.” He pointed to Accept.com and Billpoint as two sites rendering similar services."

"In sharing eBay’s “declaration of war,” Sacks observed that these encroachments arrived at a precarious time. “Unfortunately because of the forced upgrade scheduled to begin on Monday,” he explained, “we are at our most vulnerable point. It is critical that we respond swiftly and creatively in the next week to give ourselves the maximum chance of success (survival?) over the next month.” Worryingly, this would be the first time in the Billpoint-PayPal saga in which Billpoint had undercut PayPal on price. “... this will be a critical test,” Sacks wrote in his email to the group, which he dubbed “the Ebay [sic] Response Team.” He included the company’s top performers across a range of functions: its entire executive team, the producers of auction products, its head of PR, the stewards of its Visa/ Mastercard relationships, its general counsel, data experts, and others he felt could help."

"Even Musk, for all his boasts, was clear that X.com and Confinity represented evolutions, rather than revolutions, on the era’s payment technology. “It wasn’t even that we invented money transfer. We just made it useful,” Musk said. “Other companies had the idea of doing payments before Confinity or X.com, they just didn’t do it right.” He pointed to Accept.com and Billpoint as two sites rendering similar services."

"In sharing eBay’s “declaration of war,” Sacks observed that these encroachments arrived at a precarious time. “Unfortunately because of the forced upgrade scheduled to begin on Monday,” he explained, “we are at our most vulnerable point. It is critical that we respond swiftly and creatively in the next week to give ourselves the maximum chance of success (survival?) over the next month.” Worryingly, this would be the first time in the Billpoint-PayPal saga in which Billpoint had undercut PayPal on price. “… this will be a critical test,” Sacks wrote in his email to the group, which he dubbed “the Ebay [sic] Response Team.” He included the company’s top performers across a range of functions: its entire executive team, the producers of auction products, its head of PR, the stewards of its Visa/Mastercard relationships, its general counsel, data experts, and others he felt could help."