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To: noiserider who wrote (14064)	3/2/2000 7:07:00 PM
From: tktom	Respond to of 20297

X.com and PayPal merge ... This stuff is on Internet Time... biz.yahoo.com Thursday March 2, 6:51 pm Eastern Time X.com, PayPal merge to create big E-mail payment firm NEW YORK, March 2 (Reuters) - Start-up firms X.com Corp. and PayPal.com said on Thursday they agreed to merge, in a move to create the No. 1 U.S. provider of electronic cash payments through E-mails. The companies, which are both based in Palo Alto, Calif., said they currently have around 600,000 people who use their free service to E-mail cash to friends or sellers on Web auction sites such as eBay (NasdaqNM:EBAY - news). X.com and PayPal.com will each own 50 percent of the new company, which will take the X.com name. X.com's current chief executive, former Intuit Chief Executive Bill Harris, will remain at the helm. X.com, which was founded by Elon Musk in March 1999, enable users to send cash via E-mail and set up online banking accounts. Musk previously founded Internet media company Zip2, and sold it to search engine Altavista, which is now majority-owned by CMGI Inc (NasdaqNM:CMGI - news). PayPal, which has raised $28 million from high-profile investors such as U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS - news), Finnish wireless phone company Nokia (NYSE:NOK - news) and Germany's Deutsche Bank Each company is signing up around 10,000 new users a day, spending an average of $20 per new customer in marketing and incentives, said X.com's Musk and PayPal Chief Executive Peter Thiel in a telephone interview. The company eventually aims to make money on interest balances, merchant fees and selling financial services, they added. EBay's recent deal with West Coast bank Wells Fargo and Co. (NYSE:WFC - news) to enable people selling goods on the auction site to accept credit card payments should not slow X.com's growth, Thiel and Musk said. The new X.com has a much bigger user base and focuses on buyers, not merchant sellers as EBay and Wells Fargo do, they said.