October 14, 2004

Web payment service provider PayPal has experienced many disruptions in its payment services over the last five days.

The problem, which began last Friday, has caused "intermittent errors and availability for members attempting to use the PayPal site," the company said.

Users were not able to pay for eBay (ebay.com) auctions and PayPal shipping functionality was also disrupted. PayPal debit cards were reportedly rejected all across the United States.

After days of repair efforts, the company announced on Wednesday that customers should once again be able to use the service as normal.

The company said that the service outages were the result of problems associated with a new code upgrade.

"These PayPal issues are the result of unforeseen problems that resulted when a new code base to upgrade the site architecture was introduced to the PayPal platform on Friday morning," the company said in a posting on its Web site.

"The code worked well when tested and during the first hours of launch. Unfortunately, problems handling peak levels of traffic developed later in the day that created intermittent availability and errors for members. These problems have continued in varying degrees since Friday."

By Tuesday evening, PayPal reported that things had almost returned to normal.

"We have made good progress in our efforts to restore the PayPal site functionality.

The PayPal site performed well during peak traffic levels this evening, and the overall member experience has improved significantly. Most members are now able to log in to the PayPal site to access account information, use shipping functions, use PayPal debit cards, and pay for items online with no difficulty."

PayPal, an eBay company, is one of the world's largest Internet payment service providers, with over 50 million users accounts worldwide.

Source: The WHIR