eBay Grooms Another Phenom

Here's a little-known fact about eBay(EBAY Quote): It's not one of the most successful e-commerce companies in the world.

It's actually two of the most successful e-commerce companies in the world -- eBay, the global network of auction and retail sites, and PayPal, its online-payment technology subsidiary that fuels the bulk of eBay transactions. Of the two, PayPal may emerge as the bigger phenomenon in the long run.

In making PayPal the most common method of payment on its sites, eBay has slowly incubated the technology, working out its kinks and tightening up the seams that could make buyers and sellers alike consider it a lot easier, cheaper and safer to use than credit cards -- the default method of payment for online consumer transactions for now.

"In our wild aspirations, we think PayPal has the potential to be as big, if not bigger than, eBay," says Jeff Jordan, the eBay executive in charge of the PayPal subsidiary. (That Jordan was named PayPal chief in December after a five-year stint overseeing eBay's North American operations shows how seriously eBay is taking PayPal.) "But we have a whole lot of executing to do before we get there." ...